Description

My research focuses on how modern understandings of difference shape contemporary global politics. My work seeks to expose enduring hierarchies of race, ethnicity, gender, and knowledge production by examining the legacies of colonialism in diverse fields such as humanitarianism and development. I am also interested in bringing to the fore alternative forms of knowledge and lived experiences that sidestep or deconstruct said hierarchies. I remain attentive not only to critical perspectives within academia, but also to voices in art, social movements and indigenous thought that contribute to creating alternative, more just realities.

My current book project, based on my dissertation titled The River Is My Teacher: a Political Ecology of Development in the Brazilian Amazon, offers a theory of the relationship between humans and the environment by looking at local responses to displacement beyond conventional metrics to assess the impact of dams, such as the number of displaced persons, insufficient compensation policies, and visible changes in the regional ecosystem. In order to do this, the research takes seriously the possibility that the relationship between locals and their environment—for instance, considering the river a teacher, or a family member—is not simply the fruit of cultural belief but constitutes a reality in itself. I elucidate how development disavowed local ways of living by taking for granted the separation between nature, on the one hand, and humans and their culture, on the other. This separation resulted in underestimated devastation of life, because it did not account for the fact that the relationship with the river and land was irreplaceable by compensatory measures. Moreover, by showing examples of displaced riverside dwellers who had migrated to the region in recent generations, I advance the argument that these local ways of living can be learned directly with the environment and nonhumans, and not solely through ancestral or traditional cultures, contrary to what is commonly assumed in public and academic discourse. You can find abstracts of individual chapters under Writing.

My dissertation was supervised by profs. P.J. Brendese, and Robbie Shilliam, with profs. Jane Bennet, Alessandro Angelini (Anthropology) and Christy Thornton (Sociology) as additional defense committee members.