Research

What does China’s role in Latin America tell us about how the geopolitics of development are being recast in the twenty-first century? My book project brings an ethnographic perspective to scholarly understandings of the “rise of China” in Latin America through an analysis rooted in the histories, national and local politics, and environmental implications of the iconic Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric project, located in the Ecuadorian Amazon. 

My research is in conversation with the growing body of literature on “Global China” and specifically how Chinese goods, finance, and companies interface with domestic politics in the Global South in the “Going Out” period. I argue that the intentions and agency of Chinese actors are often overstated relative to the significance of domestic politics, historical development trajectories, and broader international economic forces. Through the case of Coca Codo Sinclair dam I demonstrate how discourses of sustainable development, at both national and geopolitical scales, can be disrupted and transformed through unanticipated environmental and technical phenomena such as the severe erosion of the Coca River. 

This research is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Ecuador supported by the Fulbright-Hays fellowship and a grant from the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. 

Examples of my public writing on Ecuador & China can be found here, here, here, and here.

I am especially interested in how Chinese development finance shapes local communities and ecosystems in the context of the global renewable energy transition. My recent working paper examines of the examines the environmental and social risk embedded in Chinese-financed hydroelectric power plants given their basis on historical project designs.

I work with the Global China Initiative’s Forestry, Agriculture, and Indigenous Rights program to research how Chinese banks and companies can strengthen environmental and social protections in light of the increased demand for critical minerals. Our findings on development finance and transition minerals are published here. We have two ongoing papers as part of this project, in collaboration with partners at universities in Latin America and Southern Africa.

I work with policymakers and civil society advocates outside of academia on the social and environmental impacts of development projects. A recent essay with a pioneering environmental and human rights advocate on how civil society advocacy led to the creation of the World Bank independent accountability mechanism is currently under review. 

Engagement with a variety of disciplines (political science as well as anthropology, human geography, and economics) has shaped my interest in the epistemological and methodological foundations of the social sciences. My writing on methodology includes a recent paper in International Studies Perspectives, with co-author Christina Harris, and an essay in the Global China Pulse reflecting on positionality during fieldwork related to the study of Global China.