Disputes over colonial-modern development policy

This field of research examines the governance dynamics around territory, resources and populations of colonial-modern development. At ‘global’ and national scales, it focuses on the policy infrastructures designed to overcome stubborn social and spatial exclusions, and the exclusions that result from policy and built infrastructures. For example in Ecuador, state policies favour infrastructures for resource extraction yet contribute to uneven development and marginalization. Informed by critical development and political geography, third world feminism and Indigenous theory, this research provides insights into the ambiguous, contested and contingent aspects of policy infrastructures.

Research projects

Research projects currently being undertaken on this theme include:

	Geographies of indigenous citizenship in Latin America This research project investigates the citizenship practices and everyday social interactions of Indigenous peoples in Ecuador and Peru. On the website, you will find information about our team, resources, and events in English and Spanish. The project contributes to understanding the spaces and social relations that make Indigenous peoples’ citizenship both formally and every day.
	Intercultural Bilingual Education in Chilean classrooms: Exploring youth identity, multiculturalism and nationalism This interdisciplinary research project (August 2011-July 2014, ESRC Funded) draws on human geography and sociologies of young people in Chilean secondary schools. It considers how education represents a window onto contested relations between ethnicity, nationhood, citizenship, and indigenous rights. Racism is a historically ingrained element of Chilean society and the government’s resistance to a multicultural stance on indigenous affairs raises the question of how identifications, life opportunities and political outlook of Mapuche youngsters are affected.
	Gender, race-ethnicity, place and difference Geographies of gender have become increasingly attuned to the place-specific nature of gender relations, interlocking relations of race-ethnicity, sexuality, and location, and the ways gender informs the construction, use and meanings of space, place and territory. My research on the dynamics of gender and development in the Andes spans a wide range of themes, from women's mobilization in social movements, through to development opportunities for racialized impoverished rural women in Ecuador.
	Cartographies, state formations and counter-mapping in the Andes Research on this topic covers a number of strands, exploring the postcolonial context within which states form and map themselves as territories, the ways that uneven development constitutes spaces for indigenous populations, and the counter-mapping projects undertaken by indigenous people and organisations.

Earlier projects

• Geographies of national identities: space and social difference
• Political transnationalism and development networks for indigenous people in Andean Ecuador and Bolivia
• Culture and development: Geographies, actors and paradigms
• Institutions and Public Policy in the Field Sciences