I study and teach political ecology, a diverse field of practice interested in the production of environmental inequalities, human-nature relationships, and how matters of social justice intersect with pressing environmental questions.
In particular, I was interested in how ‘human-wildlife conflict’ as a framing for understanding a wide variety of negative human-animal relations had come to both encompass and represent a wide suite of political and environmental contestations involving agriculturalists, laborers, government officials and bureaucrats, in addition to conservationists (and of course, animals). Much of my research in India has ultimately focused on how certain governmental strategies aiming to reduce forms of conflict between humans and animals often exacerbates them, and why this is so.
There I shifted gears to the study of illegal wildlife trade, with an emphasis on illegal trade in cactus and succulent plants, as well as the geopolitical and racialized contours of illegal wildlife trade interventions. This ultimately led to several years of multi-sited, multi-species fieldwork on the largely unexplored global wildlife trade in succulents, which I am currently developing into a book.
I study political ecology, a diverse field of practice interested in the production of environmental inequalities, human-nature relationships, and how matters of social (in)justice intersect with pressing environmental questions. My work draws on diverse scholarship spanning critical human geography, more-than-human geographies, and environmental politics.
Skills and Expertise
- Biodiversity and Conservation
- Environmental Politics
- Environmental Geography
- Political Ecology
- Political Ecology of Conservation
Subject areas:
- Human-Environment Interactions
- Human Geography
Keywords: political ecology, human-environment interactions, biodiversity conservation, illegal wildlife trade, political geography of the environment
