As a human geographer and postdoctoral lecturer/researcher at the Department of Geography/Kiel, I have been teaching Political Ecology and Environmental Justice classes as my favourites for more than 10 years.  In my PhD-project, I studied the transformation of traditional marine resource use in Indigenous communities in Nicaragua/Panama, focusing on changing institutions and local knowledges embedded in spiritual worldviews, and on local perceptions of environmental change such as sea-level rise. The communities are entangled in struggles with powerful economic actors and interest groups on different levels of scales, as well as in struggles for recognition and territorial autonomy. In this context, the creation of neo-traditional institutions for resource use and the local discourses on the unity of human-nature relations embedded in wider discourses on Indigeneity have been fascinating. In other small projects I have worked on migration and exclusion of Romanian Roma in Germany/France and on a protest movement against a large gold-mining project in Romania. I have begun to participate in the Enjust network during the time of its founding in 2018.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: Latin America/Caribbean, France, Romania, Germany

Elisa Privitera (Lizzy) is a researcher and practitioner, contributing to spatial environmental justice-related initiatives and with experiences in Italy, Canada, California, and Sweden. Her work draws on participatory planning, environmental humanities, political ecology, environmental justice and South studies. Lizzy has achieved significant academic milestones, including being awarded a Fulbright fellowship for a research exchange at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Currently she is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Urban Just Transitions research project at the University of Toronto Scarborough (Canada). She is co-leading the Listening Project, a community-based research initiative that collaborates with community partners to understand and envision equitable transitions. Her work focuses on investigating how the co-production of knowledge can enhance environmental and social urban justice. She holds a Ph.D. in Urban and Environmental Planning and Design. Her dissertation examined the democratization of environmental knowledge and explored the potential role of small data and toxic autobiographies in understanding and planning within risk landscapes. Additionally, she has served as an elected member of the coordination team for the AESOP Young Academics Network. Currently, she is member of the PlaNext – Next Generation Planning editorial team and of the editorial collective of Resistance: A Journal of Radical Environmental Humanities.

Country/Region of interest /research focus: Mediterranean region (especially Sicily); USA (especially California); Canada; Global South countries

Link

Link

Jakub Ciesielczuk is an Assistant Professor at the University of Nottingham. Jakub’s expertise covers environmental governance, with a particular focus on environmental legal regimes. Jakub has extensively researched the participation of various non-State actors (e.g., intergovernmental organisations, non-governmental organisations, indigenous groups, and individuals) in environmental legal regimes. Jakub also researches the issues related to the utilisation of marine genetic resources in the context of marine biodiversity. Given Jakub’s practical experience in immigration, human rights and asylum, Jakub is also interested in the intersection between environmental law and human rights, more specifically, the impact of environmental degradation on indigenous people and vulnerable communities.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: Europe, Latin America and Caribbean

Linkedin

Link

Wendy Chávez is an economist (Polytechnic School of Guayaquil, Ecuador) and holds a master’s degree in public administration (New York, USA) and a master’s degree in human settlements (KU Leuven, Belgium). She is a junior researcher and PhD student in Political and Cultural Change at the Center for Development Research of the University of Bonn. Her thesis project is about conflicts caused in the small-scale fisheries due to the large-sale fisheries, and coastal dynamics in the Gulf of Guayaquil, with a focus on power, community justice, corruption, gangs´ operations and knowledge mobility. She has worked in the Ecuadorian academia, government sector, and civil society organizations. She is a founder member of the Observatory of Public Policy of Guayaquil. She also performs voluntarily as the Academic Coordinator of the local organization Fundación Cerro Verde, which works actively with ancestral communities of the Gulf of Guayaquil to conserve the mangrove ecosystem.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: Gulf of Guayaquil, Ecuador

Link

Soy originario y radico en Monterrey, México, en la zona noreste del país. Soy partícipe en movimientos sociales con enfoque ecoanarquista y cooperativista; desde mi práctica me he formado profesionalmente diseñando y gestionando proyectos de impacto socioambiental con justicia climática desde el ecourbanismo, bioarquitectura y ecopsicología principalmente desde el Colectivo Zenderio, el cuál soy fundador desde 2019. Formo parte de la Cooperativa de Vivienda Ixlte de Monterey en donde desde un año iniciamos nuestro camino para hacernos de una vivienda digna para seguir habitando en una zona céntrica de la metrópoli y haciendo frente ante la gentrificación y despojo ocasionado por las Desarrolladoras inmobiliarias voraces. Actualmente soy miembro de la asamblea del movimiento socioambiental Un Río En El Río en donde nos organizamos para la defensa y regeneración de la cuenca ante la amenaza de los megaproyectos capitalistas que desde el origen de la ciudad industrial ha atentado a la salud del mismo y de las personas que aquí habitamos. Me gustaría seguir creciendo redes para fortalecer el impacto y compartir/aprender herramientas para la defensa del territorio.

País/región de interés/enfoque de la investigación: Noreste de México.

Enlaces

Enlaces 

Assistant professor of political science at Sciences Po Paris. Her research draws on political science, human geography and development studies, and examines the politics of climate change in small island states, with a particular focus on adaptation finance, coastal adaptation, and UN climate negotiations.

Country/Region of interest/research focus: Small Island Developing States, Comoros, Seychelles

Link