My research focuses on global environmental politics –in particular on market-based mechanisms for forest conservation such as REDD+– and how they reconfigure and are resisted by socio-spatial identities and socio-ecological relationships in so-called 'developing' countries. I approach this topic through two main lenses. First, through the analysis of material-discursive practices that reshape environment, space and society within the global ‘abstract space’ of instrumental rationalisation and capitalist exchange-ability. Second, through the empirical study of diverse everyday socio-spatial, economic, cultural and political practices in relation to the natural environment and of local understandings of environmental change. Over the last five years, I have conducted fieldwork in DR Congo.
Experience
–present
PhD Researcher, Development Studies, University of Antwerp, University of Antwerp
Education
2010
KU Leuven, MA Business Economics and Management
2009
Université Libre de Bruxelles, MA Anthropology
2007
Université Libre de Bruxelles, BA Sociology and Anthropology
Publications
2019
Contested mappings in a dynamic space: emerging socio-spatial relationships in the context of REDD+. A case from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Landscape Research
2018
Silencing Agency in Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) by Essentializing a Neoliberal ‘Monster’ Into Being: A Response to Fletcher & Büscher's ‘PES Conceit’, Ecological Economics
2015
'Towards a power-sensitive and socially informed analysis of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES): Addressing the gaps in the current debate', Ecological Economics