I am a social anthropologist and associate professor and the Head of the Department's PhD Programme in International Environment and Development Sudies. Before joining Noragric in 2009 I held research positions at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights. In 2018 I was a visiting scholar at the Univesity of California, Davis. I completed my PhD degree at the University of Oslo in 2006.
My current research focuses on the political ecology and environmental anthropology of mineral extraction, with a specific interest in the geo-social transformations caused by large-scale mining. My research interests also include participatory governance, indigenous rights and environmental justice; the role of minerals in the 'green shift'; recent socio-environmental history of the colonization of the Amazon; decolonial perspectives and methodologies; and the intersection of indigenous, academic and coroporate science epistemological practices. I have previous research experience within the fields of indigenous economy, transnational migration and care economies. I teach critical social theory and research methods at Master- and PhD-levels.
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Publications
Selected publications
Edited volumes:
Leifsen, E., M.T. Gustafsson, M.A. Guzmán-Gallegos, A. Schilling-Vacaflor 2018: New mechanisms of participation in extractive governance: Between technologies of governance and resistance work. Routledge
VanTeijlingen, K., E. Leifsen, C. Fernández-Salvador, L. Sánchez-Váquez 2017: La Amazonia minada: Minería a gran escala y conflictos en el sur del Ecuador. Abya Yala
Journal articles and book chapters:
Guzmán-Galleogs, M. & E. Leifsen 2022: Anthropology, the environment and environmental crisis, in McCallum, D. (ed.) The Palgrave Handbook of the History of the Human Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan
Leifsen E. 2021: Governance sensitivities and the politics of translation: Rethinking the colonization of the Shuar of Ecuador's Amazonian South-East, in Journal of Latin American Studies 53 (4).
Leifsen, E. 2020: The socionature that neo-extractivism can see: Practicing redistribution and compensation around large-scale mining in the Southern Ecuadorian Amazon, in Political Geography 80.
Leifsen, E. & L. Sánchez-Váquez 2019: Resistencia antiminera en espacios formales de gobernanza: El caso de CASCOMI en Ecuador, in European Review of Latin American and Carribean Studies 108.
Leifsen, E. 2017: Wasteland by design: Disposession by contamination and the struggle for water justice in the Ecuadorian Amazon, in Extracting Industries and Society 4.
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Lecturing
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Projects & research
Projects
Recognizing the increasing number of socio-environmental conflicts surrounding resource extraction in Latin America over the last decade, this research project aims to study the nature and outcome of currently available mechanisms for conflict resolution.
Areas of research