September 2023 Update

Dear POLLEN Members and Friends,  We are pleased to share with you today, as usual on the 25th of every month, the latest publications, vacancies, CfP, and much more from…

Dear POLLEN Members and Friends, 

We are pleased to share with you today, as usual on the 25th of every month, the latest publications, vacancies, CfP, and much more from our vibrant community. 

This month holds a special announcement! As you are aware, we welcome proposals from academics/activists for blog posts on the POLLEN blog. We are thrilled to announce that we are expanding this invitation to include students who are studying political ecology. In the upcoming months, Lund University will be publishing some blog posts from their own political ecology students on the blog. We hope this will be an opportunity to energize our blog and continue sharing interesting perspectives.

If your POLLEN Node has not been introduced by us yet, or if your Node is keen to share its work, vacancy opportunities, or others in our upcoming newsletter, please write to us at politicalecologynetwork@gmail.com. 

With best regards from your POLLEN Secretariat  

Fabiola Espinoza, Torsten Krause, Mine Islar and Wim Carton  

IMPORTANT! To get the best view of this newsletter, please enable the media content at the top of the e-mail. 

Publications 

Journal articles 

  1. Dunlap, A. & Tornel, C. (2023). An insurrection in energy research: a dialogue between Carlos Tornel and Alexander Dunlap on energy justice, capitalist warfare & decolonization. Globalizations. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2023.2204543 
  1. Dunlap, A. and C. Tornel. 2023. Pluralizing energy justice? Towards cultivating an unruly, autonomous and insurrectionary research agenda. Energy Research & Social Science, 103, 1-9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2023.103217 
  1. Blake, L.J., Chohan, J.K. and Escobar, M.P. (2023). Agro-extractivism and neoliberal conservation: campesino abandonment in the Boyacá páramos, Colombia. Journal of Rural Studies, 102 (103071). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2023.103071  
  1. Koot, S., Grant, J., Puckett, F., //Khumûb, M., Mushavanga, T., Mushavanga, D., ≠Oma Tsamkxao, L., /Ui Kunta, S., Dommerholt, T., Katsimpri, E., Gressier, C., Van der Wulp, C., Paksi, A. and Castelijns, E. (2023 [for 2020]). The limitations of research codes and contracts: Ethnography and agency among San hunter-gatherers of southern Africa. Hunter Gatherer Research 6 (1-2): 147-168. 2023 – Koot et al. – The limitations of research codes and contracts 
  1. Edwards, F. (2023) Food Resistance Movements: Journeying through Alternative Food Networks. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-19-5795-6 
  1. Marfurt, Franziska, Tobias Haller, and Patrick Bottazzi. 2023. “Participatory guarantee systems in Senegal: shifting labour dynamics in agroecology.”  The Journal of Peasant Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2023.2246384
  1. Sargin, A. (2023), “Activists as Knowledge Producers: How Can Grassroots Activism Contribute to Green Criminological Scholarship?”, Canning, V., Martin, G. and Tombs, S. (Ed.) The Emerald International Handbook of Activist Criminology, Emerald Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp. 63-77. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80262-199-020231005.

  2. Espinosa, A. R., & Dunlap, A. (2023). How jaguars are actually stolen: Big cat conservation and the green extractivist nexus in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. Journal of Political Ecology, 30(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5453

 Events & Announcements 

  1. Conference 9th International Conference of Critical Geographies  
    When: October 23-29, 2023  
    Where: Mexico City  
    More info: https://iccg2023.org/en/english/ 
  1. Conference Growth and Climate  
    When: March 13-15, 2024
    Where: Hotel Exe Campus-UAB, Barcelona (Spain)  
    More info: https://www.growthvsclimate2023.org/ 

  2. Conference First Annual Conference of Critical Legal Geography
    When: February 21-23, 2024 
    Where: Torino, Italy.
    More info: https://lawandspace.com/first-annual-critical-legal-geography-conference/ 

Vacancies 

  1. Assistant Professor position of Environmental History at the University of California, Berkeley. The University of California at Berkeley seeks applications for a full-time tenure-track faculty appointment at the level of assistant professor in the Department of History. The position is defined as Environmental History, including histories of how people have interacted with, represented, thought about, and changed and/or been changed by the biophysical places, biomes, and/or earth systems of which they have been a part. We welcome applications from candidates in all fields, areas, and periods of Environmental History.
    More info: https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF04122
    Deadline: November 1, 2023  
  1. Postdoctoral Research Associate position in the Environmental Humanities at the Center for Water Cultures, University of Hull. The Centre for Water Cultures is hosted by the Energy and Environment Institute. It explores humanity’s relationships with water in the green-blue regions of the world, past, present, and future. The post will be based in the Energy and Environment Institute, established in late 2017. The PDRA will support the Centre for Water Culture and aligned projects, including undertaking research in the environmental humanities, including international comparative projects; leading co-authored publications and presentations; working with colleagues and stakeholders to deliver knowledge exchange, including community engagement, arts interventions and other activities as developed by the PDRA; undertaking monitoring and evaluation of these engagement and impact activities; and writing policy briefs and other policy outputs.
    More info: https://jobs.hull.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?ref=UOH-TA-0081
    Deadline: October 11, 2023 
  1. Postdoctoral Fellowships at Ghent University. We invite applications for a postdoctoral position (junior or senior, both three years) at the South Asian Ghent Research group (see https://research.flw.ugent.be/en/sangh). This is a vibrant, interdisciplinary research group focusing on South Asia and committed to working with primary sources. The applications run through the Flemish Research Fund, FWO (see https://www.fwo.be/en/news/calls/postdoc-junior/ and https://www.fwo.be/en/fellowships-funding/postdoctoral-fellowships/senior-postdoctoral-fellowship/ for the calls). 
    More info:https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20006457/fellowships-south-asia-fwo-postdoctoral-fellowships-ghent
    Deadline: December 1, 2023 

Calls 

  1. Call for papers session at German DVPW Congress 2024 “Politics in the Poly-Crisis” (September 24th to 27th, 2024, in Göttingen): Panel 94 “Unraveling the Political Ecology of Technologies and Infrastructures”. In this panel, we explore the potential of Political Ecology to analyze the role and implications of technologies and infrastructures. We focus on the areas of agriculture, energy, and mobility, with the aim of bringing together conceptual and empirical contributions on different examples, such as precision agriculture, geoengineering, and hydrogen infrastructures. This panel aims to stimulate dialogue and further research on how to unravel the complex relationships between society, nature, and technologies in the age of polycrises. We welcome contributions from Policy Studies, Political Ecology and Political Economy, Critical Theory of Technology, Critical Data and Innovation Studies, and Science and Technology Studies.
    More info: https://www.dvpw.de/en/dvpw2024/call-for-papers
    Contact: Sarah Hackfort, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin(sarah.hackfort@hu-berlin.de)
    Deadline:  October 31, 2023
  1. Call for papers for the panel: The Political Ecology of Marginalized Labour collectives: Intersecting Agency, Access, and Power Dynamics in the Global South for the “APAD” 2024 International Conference at Liège (May 22-24, 2024). We invite practitioners, scholars, researchers, and activists to submit their contributions for a panel discussion within an interdisciplinary conference that explores the political ecology of divisive labor for marginalized groups in Africa and South Asia (Global South). We aim to investigate the complex interactions between power relations, social categories, and environmental dynamics that shape the experiences of individuals in the workplace. Using an intersectional lens and incorporating principles of political ecology, we aim to develop a comprehensive understanding of agency, access, and power dynamics within underrepresented/gendered labor cohorts.
    More info: https://apad-association.org/conf-panel/the-political-ecology-of-marginalized-labour-collectives-intersecting-agency-access-and-power-dynamics-in-the-global-south/  Organizers: Camellia Biswas (camellia.biswas@iitgn.ac.in) and Buhle Francis (buhlefrancis00@gmail.com)
    Deadline: November 15, 2023.   
     

Other news items 

  1.  Short piece: “German police have long collaborated with energy giant RWE to enforce ecological catastrophe” by Andrea Brock. Link: https://theconversation.com/german-police-have-long-collaborated-with-energy-giant-rwe-to-enforce-ecological-catastrophe-198095
     
  2. We welcome a new POLLEN NODE based in Humboldt University Berlin, Agricultural and Food Policy Group (Germany). They have contributed to and published the first German Handbook on Political Ecology, which was released in 2022 and is openly accessible at https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-5627-5/handbuch-politische-oekologie/?number=978-3-8376-5627-5. Message from the Node: The overarching goal of the network is to foster international connections. United by a shared interest in using political ecology as a lens to address environmental crises and socio-ecological transformations, we focus on various research areas, including resource politics, agri-food systems transformation, energy transition, technological and digital change, as well as climate justice, both within Germany and beyond.
    You can reach out to them at: sarah.hackfort@hu-berlin.de

  3. The POLLEN NODE Levant has been recently updated. Message from the Node: Our aim is to foster collaboration, as well as critical discussions and reflections related to the different transformations and dynamics occurring around resource politics in the Levant, both in the ways it connects to the macro global picture, as well as, the micro-local contexts. This node is in its initial phase and we encourage interested researchers and practitioners to get in touch for potential collaborations and discussions. Also, we’ll be sharing our work and discussing resource politics of the Levant @LevanPolEcol on twitter.
    Short group bio: Taraf Abu Hamdan, Layla Bartheldi, Jacob Cassani, Brittany Cook, Mathilde Gingembre, Hussam Hussein, Mona Khneisser, Kendra Kintzi, Olivia Mason, Livia Perosino, China Sajadianand Noa Sanad. Coming from different institutions representing multiple disciplinary backgrounds (Anthropology,  Geography, Development Studies, Political economy, Public Policy, Refugee Studies, Environmental Sciences, and International Relations), we have been brought together by common research interests around resource politics, environmental governance, food systems environmental justice, climate change, forced exile and agrarian livelihoods in the Levant region.
    You can reach out to them at: mathilde.gingembre@gmail.com and /or tarafj@gmail.com