Center for Political Ecology is the 501(c)3 nonprofit home for a multidisciplinary, international group of researchers. Our political ecology scholarship, social documentation, publications, and advocacy reflect action-research commitments and work with diverse partners and communities. Collectively, our work documents the driving forces and controlling processes that shape the human environmental condition, structure and fuel degenerative crises, and endanger or restore biocultural health.

Directory (click on the name to see more information on each researcher’s page)

Barbara Rose Johnston has been affiliated with the Center for Political Ecology since 1991 and is the Senior Research Fellow and director of CPE’s Global Ecologies initiatives. An environmental anthropologist, her action-research explores environmental crisis and human rights abuse. Her research, publications and advocacy seeks acknowledgment and implementation of the right to a healthy environment, environmental equity, and the right to reparation and remedy. Contact her at: bjohnston [at] igc.org 

Barbara Laurence is co-founder of the Center for Political Ecology and, until 2008, served as managing editor of the journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. She is the Secretary-Treasurer and director of CPE’s Local Ecologies initiatives. A Santa Cruz-based sociologist, her committment to a socially-just and ecologically-sound world is evident in her long-standing and widespread support for community-based activism, including the nurturing and support for numerous Monterey Bay Area groups. Contact her at: balauren@ucsc.edu

James O’Connor co-founded the Center for Political Ecology and, from its inception to 1993, served as Editor-in-Chief of Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A Journal of Socialist Ecology. An Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, his insights on the dysfunction of capitalism and potential power of an ecological socialism had a major impact on the thinking of red-green scholar-activists who came of age in the 1970s, 1980s and beyond. His red-green synthesis continues to resonate, stimulate debate, and prompt new thinking, especially in light of resurgent attention to the relationship between capitalism, environmental degradation, and global crises.

Monti Aguirre is an activist, scholar, film-maker and advocate who has worked for the past two decades in support of Latin American indigenous peoples’ rights to self-determination, free and prior informed consent, and the right to sustainable livelihood and healthy environments. She is the community outreach coordinator for International Rivers’ Latin America program, and the Indigenous Peoples Rights Program Coordinator for the Socio-Environmental Fund CASA. Her collaborative and participatory action-research helped shape the Chixoy Dam Reparations study and related advocacy. At CPE, Monti Aguirre develops and directs US-sourced contributions to grassroots and indigenous community organizations in defense of human rights and the environment groups. Contact her at: montidelmar@gmail.com

Holly Barker is an applied anthropologist who has some two decades of experience working in the Marshall Islands and with political leaders in the Marshall Islands, first as a Peace Corps volunteer on Mili Atoll, and later as the Senior Advisor to the Ambassador, Embassy of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), Washington D.C.  She is a member of the University of Washington’s Anthropology Department and a curator at the Burke Musuem. As a research fellow at CPE she collaborates with Barbara Rose Johnston on Marshall Islands nuclear environment, health and human rights issues. Contact her at: hmbarker @u.washington.edu

Annie Bird is co-founder of Rights Action and former research fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. Since 1995 Annie Bird has helped fund and support grassroots organizations in Central America, especially in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Southern Mexico that are struggling for community controlled development and environmental protection; for disaster and repression relief; for truth, memory, justice and human rights; and for democracy and the rule of law. Her community-based experiences, research, publications, and advocacy has made her a key actor in the international accountability movement with environmental quality/social justice work that calls governments and corporations to account for policies that cause harms and human rights violations. Contact her at: annie@rightsandecology.org

Janet M. Chernela is a Professor of Anthropology and Latin American Studies at the University of Maryland.  She has worked among indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin for over three decades.  Her research interests include local knowledge, indigenous rights and organizations; gender and language.  She is the founder of AMARN/Numia Kura, one of the oldest ongoing indigenous associations in Brazil and former president of the international Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America. Her current work includes a focus on indigenous peoples and carbon sequestration, women and ethnodevelopment, indigenous language, and REDD in indigenous territories.  Contact her at: chernela@gmail.com

Kathleen Dill is an activist and anthropologist who has helped exhume clandestine graves with the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG), documented the emergence of a Maya-Achí social movement in the wake of Guatemalan state violence, and for the Center for Legal Action in Human Rights (CALDH), produced a report to support the prosecution of Efrain Rios Montt, the primary intellectual author of genocide in Guatemala. She has also conducted research for Kings College, London on the efficacy of SINAPRED, Nicaragua’s state disaster prevention system, worked with British and Central American scientists to design a satelitte-based, early warning system for volcanic eruptions. Her action-research prioritize, human rights, social justice, and the protection of the environment.  Contact her at kathyswebmail@mac.com

Laura R. Graham is an indigenous rights activist and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Iowa. For some 30 years she has worked in collaboration with Xavanta peoples of central Brazil, and more recently with Wayuu of Venezuela and Columbia. Author of publications she is also the producer and codirector, with indigenous filmmakers David Hernández Palma (Wayuu) and Cimi Waissé (Xavante) of the film OWNERS OF THE WATER: Conflict and Collaboration over Rivers (DOcumentary Educational Resources, 2009). Contact her at: laura-graham@uiowa.edu

Suzanne Hanchett is an anthropologist with more than 30 years’ experience in research, university teaching, public administration, and social development. An expert in participatory planning, program evaluation, gender in development and women’s rights, reproductive health and adolescent pregnancy prevention, organizational systems, and other social development issues she has worked in South Asia (Bangladesh and India), Africa (Sudan and Benin), the West Bank and Gaza, and the United States. For the past decade she has been working with UNICEF and other international organizations on environmental issues, especially the problem of arsenic in drinking water, the cultural context of water development projects, and the sustainability of sanitation programs in Bangladesh. Contact her at: suzanne.hanchett@caa.columbia.edu

George Martin is an environmental sociologist, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Montclair State University, Visiting Professor at the Centre for Environmental Strategy at the University of Surrey, CPE researcher, and a senior editor of the journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. His current work documents and supports the expansion of sustainable food production in urban settings. His primary argument: Community gardens and farms and other forms of urban agriculture represent far more than food; they generate social capital that drives community development, promotes environmental education, and advances environmental justice–all of which are critical to social sustainability. Contact him at: martingt@mail.montclair.edu