Resource Conflicts

28 July 2021

Vacancy: Translator for English into Latin American legal Spanish  

We are looking for a PhD student or early career researcher who is fluent in Spanish and English and has knowledge of Latin American Law traditions to provide translation support on a research project database. The database is part of the British Academy/GCRF-funded project ‘The Juridification of Resource Conflicts: Legal Cultures, Moralities and Environmental Politics in Central America’, which examines legal and legal-like practices involved in resource conflicts in Central America and Mexico...

30 June 2021

Dr Ainhoa Montoya publishes new article in the Journal of Latin American Studies 

The Journal of Latin American Studies has published an article by Dr Ainhoa Montoya entitled, “On Care for Our Common Home: Ecological Materiality and Sovereignty over the Lempa Transboundary Watershed”. The article draws on her previous but related ESRC funded project. It explores the complex challenges involved in citizen-led legislative initiatives to protect the environment of the transborder water system of the Lempa River, one of Central America’s key watersheds under threat, and how these initiatives are shaped by eco-theology and the region's political history.

26 May 2021

Dr Rachel Sieder awarded prize by Law and Society Association

In May 2021, Dr Rachel Sieder was among 22 scholars awarded prizes by the Law and Society Association (LSA) in recognition of their publications and contributions to the law and society field. The LSA recognised Dr Rachel Sieder as "A leading scholar in the study of legal pluralism and the judicialization of politics". Congratulations Rachel!

28 January 2021

Dr Rachel Sieder gives seminar on Juridification of Indigenous struggles and the case of Marlin mine in Guatemala

On 28 January 2021, Dr Rachel Sieder presented a virtual Seminar “The Juridification of Indigenous Struggles: The case of Marlin Mine in Guatemala” as part of the CIESAS Seminar Series: “Ethnicity, Indigenous Peoples and Globalization”. The presentation, and commentary by Ana Isabel Braconnier, can be viewed here. 

17 December 2020

Call for papers for issue of FLACSO journal on extractivism edited by project researchers

In December 2020, the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Ecuador (FLACSO Ecuador) issued a call for articles on the juridification of mining extractivism in Latin America for the January 2022 edition of the ICONOS journal. Dr Ainhoa Montoya, Dr Rachel Sieder and Dr Yacotzin Bravo Espinoza of the Juridification of Resource Conflicts project will edit this 72nd edition of ICONOS. The issue will focus on the diverse uses of the law in the context of conflicts over subsoil resource extraction. Please circulate this call for papers which runs till 3 May 2021.

6 October 2020

The Guardian publishes article on "How Honduras became one of the most dangerous countries to defend natural resources"

Journalist, Nina Lakhani, reports on human rights violations committed against Honduran activists and communities defending territory and natural resources in Honduras. The article particularly focuses on the case of Guapinol in Tocoa municipality, Colón Department and references the report by a group of international experts, including Dr Ainhoa Montoya of ILAS, which documents the conflict.

5 March 2020

Dr Rupert Knox joins research project

Dr Rupert Knox has joined the team as research assistant in our British Academy-funded project. Among other tasks, he will be working with Dr Ainhoa Montoya, Dr Rachel Sieder and Dr Yacotzin Bravo to further develop and update the repository of legal actions and documents for human rights lawyers and human rights defenders...

28 July 2019

Publication on water epistemologies and ontologies co-authored by Dr Rachel Sieder

Rachel Sieder published an article with Lieselotte Vaiene in Prensa Comunitaria, about Maya q’eqchi’ epistemologies and ontologies of water in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala...

28 July 2019

28 July 2019

Rachel Sieder has published the Routledge Handbook of Law and Society in Latin America (coedited with Karina Ansolabehere and Tatiana Alfonso)

The Routledge Handbook of Law and Society in Latin America presents cutting-edge analysis of the central theoretical and applied areas of enquiry in socio-legal studies in the region  ...

03 June 2019

Dr Yacotzin Bravo joins research team

Dr Yacotzin Bravo, who obtained her PhD in Social Anthropology and her BA in Law from Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico ..

03 October 2018

ILAS Academic, Dr Ainhoa Montoya, awarded British Academy grant under the Sustainable Development Programme 2018

ILAS lecturer, Dr Ainhoa Montoya, has been awarded funding by the British Academy to pursue research designed to help tackle the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

The Legal Cultures of the Subsoil Database. This database is a repository of legal and law-like mechanisms and instruments used by a range of stakeholders (grassroots community groups, civil society organisations, governments and corporations) in the context of extraction-related conflicts as a means to assert their rights over territory and resource governance.

In development

In September 2020, the report ,"Guapinol Resists: Origins of the Mining Conflict in the Lower Aguán" (Spanish), was published. The report which was researched and compiled by a group of international experts, including Dr Ainhoa Montoya of ILAS, documents the social conflict and ongoing human rights violations committed in the context of an iron oxide mining project in the municipality of Tocoa, Department of Colón, Honduras.

The research team has organised panels and presented papers at the following conferences:

• The Law and Society Association (LSA) Annual Meeting. Online, 28 to 31 May 2020.
• ‘Extraction: Tracing the Veins’ conference. Online, 29 June to 10 July 2020. Held by the Massey University Political Ecology Research Centre and Wageningen University.
• Annual congress of the Asociación Latinoamericana de Antropología (Latin American Anthropological Association, ALA). Online, 23 to 28 November 2020.

In development

Ainhoa is an anthropologist and senior lecturer in Latin American Studies. She is the Director of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Her research has explored post-war violence in El Salvador and how this country’s violent peace has shaped people’s imaginaries and enactments of democracy. This work has been published as the book-length monograph The Violence of Democracy: Political Life in Postwar El Salvador (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). With the support of an ESRC Future Research Leaders award, Ainhoa has conducted research on violent resource conflicts in Central America, exploring the multiscalar legal actions that have been developed in the context of these conflicts. She is co-editor of the Bulletin of Latin American Research.

Email

Rachel is a senior research professor at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS) in Mexico City. She is also an associate senior researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway. She has worked for the last three decades on Central America, and her research interests include human rights, indigenous rights, social movements, indigenous law, legal anthropology, the state and violence. She has published 19 books and edited volumes, most recently Demanding Justice and Security: Indigenous Women and Legal Pluralities in Latin America (Rutgers University Press, 2017) and (with Karina Ansolabehere and Tatiana Alfonso eds.) The Handbook of Law and Society in Latin America (Routledge, 2019).

María Teresa is a senior research professor at the Center for Research and Graduate Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) in Mexico City and member of CIESAS Legal and Forensic Anthropology Lab. She is a PhD in Sociology from the University of Paris VIII and specialist in legal and political anthropology, and studies of legal pluralism, indigenous rights, gender justice and autonomies. She has developed several collective and individual research projects around these themes, among them the collective project ‘Globalization, Indigenous Rights and Justice: A Perspective from Gender and Power’. She is currently working on the collective project ‘Ethnographic Documentation of Gender Violences towards Indigenous Women in Guerrero, Mexico’. She has also contributed expert anthropological witness reports and cultural critique to judicial processes that involve indigenous people who defend their collective rights. Among her most recent publications is the book ‘Pueblos indígenas y Estado en México. La disputa por la justicia y los derechos’ (CIESAS, 2017), coauthored with Santiago Bastos.

Yacotzin is a lawyer and anthropologist as well as a specialist in human rights, indigenous people’s rights and environmental law. She obtained her BA and MA from UNAM and her PhD from UAM Iztapalapa. She has contributed to, and legally assessed, citizens’ movements defending their rights in Mexico, in particular the fishing cucapá populations of Baja California since 2010. She has published on the rights of indigenous peoples and economic, social and cultural rights; indigenous autonomies and territorial dispossession; critical geography and critical theory of law.

Dr Rupert Knox was awarded his PhD by University of Sheffield in 2019. His interdisciplinary research examines how human rights discourse and social media practices featured in recent social movements challenging partial democracy and impunity in Mexico. Prior to his doctorate he worked with Amnesty International for eighteen years, with more than a decade’s experience leading the organisation’s research and advocacy on a range of human rights issues in Mexico.