I am a human geographer and political ecologist researching the politics of resource extraction, community mobilisation and environmental governance in Latin America, particularly in Ecuador and Peru.

As a postdoctoral research associate on the INFRACURSIONS project, I am conducting ethnographic research in the region of Madre De Dios, in the Peruvian Amazon. I am interested in exploring informal regimes of resource governance that arise in contexts of informal and illegal gold mining, where small-scale mining activities intersect with other forms of land use. In particular, I focus on the participation of women in gold mining and on the processes of territorialisation that they enact as they settle, mine and move within this region. The research also aims to shed light on how socio-legal infrastructures are leveraged, contested and reworked through the expansion of small-scale mining.

I am trained in international relations, development studies and sustainability and I hold a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Edinburgh. Thus far, my research has examined the territorial dimensions of Indigenous struggles for autonomy and post-extractive futures, as well as the politics of collaboration between environmentalists and Indigenous activists in the Ecuadorian Amazon. I have conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork collaborating with Waorani activist and organisations in Pastaza, Ecuador. In my work I have integrated political ecology, social movement geographies, and decolonial theory to critically analyse the effects and legacies of anti-oil mobilisations.

Recent projects explore how territorial epistemologies are integrated into Indigenous-led education programs in the Ecuadorian Amazon and how youth climate activism unfolds in times of democratic backsliding.

I am an international fellow at the Young Academy for Sustainability Research at the University of Freiburg (Germany), where I am involved in interdisciplinary research projects.