- Institutt for internasjonale miljø- og utviklingsstudier, Noragric
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.
Liste med publikasjoner fra min forskning. (Cristin)
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.