Notes on Contributors
Matthew Archer
Matthew Archer studies corporate sustainability, sustainable finance and sustainable development through the lens of political ecology and environmental anthropology. He is currently a lecturer in sustainability in the Department of Environment and Geography at the University of York.
Ramón M. Balcázar
is a PhD candidate in Rural Development at the Autonomous Metropolitan University of Mexico—uam and Coordinator at opsal (the Plurinational Observatory of Andean Salt Flats). Taking a participatory approach, his militant research is situated at the intersection of multilateral climate policies and the subsequent expansion of green extractivism throughout Indigenous/rural territories in the Andean puna. His expertise lies in rural development, agroecology, neo-extractivism, climate justice, socio-environmental movements, just transition and post-development.
Javiera Barandiarán
is associate professor in Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her work explores the intersection of science, environment, and development in Latin America. Her research on lithium has been awarded support from the Mellon Foundation and the National Science Foundation, and has been published in World Development. In 2022, she received the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin for her lithium work.
Asanda Benya
Asanda Benya is a labour sociologist based at the University of Cape Town. She works at the intersection of gender, class and race. She researches the extractives industries, gendered workplace subjectivities, labour and feminist movements.
James J. A. Blair
is assistant professor of Geography and Anthropology at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Blair holds a PhD in Anthropology from The Graduate Center, City University of New York. His work centers on energy, water and environmental justice in the Americas. In addition to his research, Blair has professional experience in environmental policy as an international advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council (nrdc).
is a Lionel Murphy Foundation Scholar and a Leadership for the Ecozoic fellow and is pursuing a PhD at McGill University. She is also a lecturer in the Faculty of Law of the University of Tasmania.
Filipe Calvão
Filipe Calvão is an economic and environmental anthropologist broadly interested in the intersection of nature, culture and capital in postcolonial Africa. He is an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (iheid) and a trained gemmologist and diamond grader. His research examines the politics, ecologies and economies of mineral extraction, with a current focus on the nexus between digitalization, work and extractivism.
Ben Collins
is a postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. He is also an Economics for the Anthropocene (E4A) graduate, and a PhD graduate at McGill University.
Alexander Dunlap
is a visiting research fellow at the University of Helsinki. His work has critically examined police–military transformations, market-based conservation, wind energy development, and extractive projects more generally in Latin America and Europe. He is the author of Renewing Destruction: Wind Energy Development, Conflict and Resistance in a Latin American Context (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), the co-author of The Violent Technologies of Extraction: Political Ecology, Critical Agrarian Studies and the Capitalist Worldeater (Palgrave, 2020), and the co-editor of Enforcing Ecocide: Power, Policing and Planetary Militarization (Palgrave, 2022).
Paul Robert Gilbert
is a senior lecturer in International Development at the University of Sussex. His research has focused on extractive industry expertise, finance, and violence, predominantly in Bangladesh. With Clea Bourne, Max Haiven and Johnna Montgomerie, he is editor of Entangled Legacies of Empire: Race, Finance & Inequality (Manchester University Press, 2022).
Håvard Haarstad
is professor of Human Geography and director of the Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation at the University of Bergen (Norway).
is a human geographer who graduated from the Philipps University of Marburg in Geography and Peace and Conflict Studies. She later taught at the Justus Liebig University of Giessen, where she also wrote her PhD, on resource conflicts in Latin America. Her research interest lies in understanding when nature becomes a means of conflict or of peace.
Simon Lobach
is working towards a PhD in International History and Politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute, with a focus on environmental history. He already holds degrees in History and in Latin American Studies, and has worked as a consultant on environment-related projects for several years, mainly within the United Nations. His current research focuses on histories of bauxite and aluminium across Amazonia, including Brazil, Suriname, Guyana and Venezuela.
Amanda Maxwell
is managing director of the International Program at nrdc. Maxwell’s work focuses on promoting clean energy, cleaning up dirty fuels, improving air quality, and protecting wildlife and wildlands throughout Latin America. She received her Bachelor’s degree in History and Spanish from Middlebury College and her Master’s in International Politics and Economics from Charles University in Prague. She has also studied at the Universidad de Buenos Aires.
Ryan Parsons
is an assistant professor of Sociology and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. His research explores linkages between geographic and social mobility, ethnic stratification, rural development, and inequality in a range of national and subnational contexts. He holds a PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from Princeton University.
Erik Post
is a PhD candidate in geography at the University of British Columbia. His research explores the articulation of violence, geopolitics, and extractivism. He obtained his Master’s degree in International Affairs at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Prior to his PhD research, he worked for the European Commission, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Crisis Group, and the Belgian Network for Sustainable Development.
is a postdoctoral researcher at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, where she is part of the Agricultural and Food Policy Group and the Biomaterialities Research Group. Her research and teaching focuses on socioecological transformations, the bio-economy, the digitalisation of agriculture, land and mining conflicts, and social movements, with a regional focus on Africa and Europe.
Michelle Pressend
is academic coordinator of the African regional hub of trajects, the Transnational Centre for Just Transitions in Energy, Climate and Sustainability, and a lecturer in Political Ecology at the University of Cape Town. She is also a PhD candidate in Anthropology in association with Environmental Humanities South at the same university.
Devyn Remme
is a PhD candidate at the University of Bergen (Norway). She holds an interdisciplinary BSc in The Environment and Resources and an MPhil in Geographies of Sustainable Development.
Kjetil Rommetveit
is associate professor at the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities at the University of Bergen (Norway).
Siddharth Sareen
is associate professor of Energy and Environment at the Department of Media and Social Sciences at the University of Stavanger and associate professor ii at the Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation at the University of Bergen, both in Norway.
Sina Trölenberg
works at a German non-governmental organisation in the areas of climate justice and project management with organisations from Central America and Europe. She holds an MSc in Human Geography from the University of Giessen, where she focused on human–environment interactions, political ecology and environmental peacebuilding, with a regional emphasis on Colombia and Germany. Her ba in Geography and Spanish Studies was awarded by the University of Münster.