Dr. Margherita Scazza

Curriculum Vitae

I am a human geographer interested in environmental justice, resource politics and Indigenous mobilisations in Latin America. My research draws on the fields of political ecology, geographies of social movements and decolonial theory. I am currently part of a team working on the project INFRACURSIONS: Deregulated Infrastructures of Extraction in Rainforest Frontiers https://infracursions.org at the University of Bristol. The project investigates ‘incursion economies’ in the Amazon. These are small-scale extractive activities such as informal mining, land grabbing and selective logging, that invade remote frontiers and cause environmental degradation. Through an interdisciplinary approach, the project analyses remote sensing data, ethnographic research, policy, supply chains and more to understand the infrastructures that facilitate the operation of ‘incursion economies’.

I hold a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Edinburgh where I was a doctoral researcher between 2018 and 2022, and where I worked as a Teaching Fellow between 2022 and 2024. My doctoral research explored Indigenous anti-extractivist resistance in the Ecuadorian Amazon, specifically focusing on (1) the politics of collaborations between Indigenous activists and environmental organisations; (2) questions of territorial governance, transformations and contestations; (3) struggles for autonomy, within and beyond the realm of resource governance.

Recently, I have also been focusing on processes of just energy transitions and the role of place-based education in fostering post-extractive futures.
I am particularly interested in understanding the role of Indigenous autonomous education programmes and intergenerational knowledge transmission in achieving environmental justice and just energy transitions.