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Melanie Sommerville
  • Postdoctoral Fellow
    • Faculty of Landscape and Society
    • International Environment and Development Studies, Noragric
+4767231337
melanie.sommerville@nmbu.no
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I joined Noragric as a Tenure Track Postdoctoral Fellow in September 2020. I completed my PhD in Human Geography at the University of British Columbia and held a Faculty of Arts and Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto prior to coming to NMBU.

My research spans three thematic areas. First, I explore processes of agrarian transition and rural development, both historically and during the contemporary period. Second, I examine the capacity of finance, in both its high and everyday forms, to catalyse progressive social and environmental change or, less hopefully, to lock in pre-existing patterns of inequality and degradation. Third, I investigate how contemporary liberal democracies address histories of colonialism, slavery, and racialisation, focusing in particular on reconciliation, land restitution, and reparations processes.

While much of my empirical work to date has been undertaken in Canada (my birthplace) and South Africa, my fascination with relational methodologies means that other geographic locations similarly feature in my reading, thinking, and teaching.   

Building on work completed during my PhD, I continue to explore the formation that I call ‘reparative capitalism,’ whereby capital incorporates critiques about its social and ecological past as new sites of elite accumulation.

I am also working to develop three new projects in South Africa, focused on the economics of the game farming sector, emerging tensions between liberal democratic institutions and traditional authorities in communal areas, and Norwegian investments in large-scale conservation and agriculture projects, respectively.

  • Areas of work
    • Agrarian transition and reform
    • Rural development and underdevelopment
    • Finance and financialization
    • Reconciliation and reparations
    • Conservation and ecological change
  • Publications
    My publications in Cristin

    Sommerville, M., L. Khumalo, T. Kamuti, and S. Brooks (2021) Game On! Understanding the Emerging Game Meat Value Chain in South Africa . Boston: Tiny Beam Fund.

    Sommerville, M. (2021). 'Naturalizing finance, financializing natives': Indigeneity, race, and 'responsible' agricultural investment in Canada . Antipode  53 (3): 643-664.  

    Sommerville, M. (2019). Agrarian Repair: Agriculture, Race, and Accumulation in Contemporary Canada and South Africa .  PhD Dissertation. Vancouver: Department of Geography, University of British Columbia. Available for reading and download here: 

    Sommerville, M. (2018). Old roots, new shoots: Thickening the local histories of agri-food financialization. In: Bjorkhaug, H., A. Magnan and G. Lawrence (Eds). The Financialization of Agri-Food Systems: Contested Transformations . London: Routledge.

    Le Billon, P. and M. Sommerville (2017). Landing capital and assembling 'investable land' in the extractive and agricultural sectors . Geoforum 82: 212-224.

    Sommerville, M. and A. Magnan (2015). 'Pinstripes on the prairies': Examining the financialization of farming systems in the Canadian prairie provinces.  Journal of Peasant Studies 42 (1): 119-144.

    Sommerville, M., J. Essex, and P. Le Billon (2014). The 'global food crisis' and the geopolitics of food security . Geopolitics 19 (2): 239-265.

  • Lecturing

    Course responsible for EDS130 Introduction to Political Ecology

    Contributor to EDS330 Political Ecology; EDS341 Decolonizing Theory in the Age of Post-Development; and EDS379 Global Political Economy.

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