PhD (University of California, Davis), MA (Simon Fraser University),

Hons. BA (University of Toronto)

Newton International Fellow (Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Manchester, 2009)

RESEARCH AREAS

1) Environmental Conflict, Resource Extraction, and Social Movements

My research explores the dynamics of conflicts over resource extraction in Latin America, focusing on mining activity and related controversies over pollution, water scarcity, community rights, and corporate accountability. I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in communities affected by mining in Peru, where I examined changing forms of politics, mining technologies, and contested knowledges about Nature that emerged alongside the expansion of extractive activity into areas formerly used for agriculture and farming.

I also looked at mining development on the border between Chile and Argentina. I examined how new territories of extraction are imagined and materially produced as sites of unlimited potential for mining and investment, and how this vision of extractive frontiers is challenged by local and international activism.

My book Unearthing Conflict: Corporate Mining, Activism, and Expertise in Peru (Duke Universy Press 2015) received an Honourable Mention for the 2016 Bryce Wood Book Award from the Latin American Studies Association (LASA).

The Spanish translation of the book, Desenterrando el Conflicto: Empresas mineras, activistas y expertos en el Perú, was published by the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (Institute of Peruvian Studies) in Lima.

2) Food Politics, Development Studies, and Globalization

My new research investigates recent changes in the production of quinoa, which originates in the Andes but has rapidly become a "global" food. My research interrogates the promise of quinoa for food security and sustainable agriculture, and examines the controversies surrounding the ownership, control, and dissemination of quinoa varieties.