My research focuses on the politics of conservation areas, especially national and transnational parks. I investigate the ecological politics of international borders and borderlands, environmental displacement and related human rights abuses, the militarization of protected areas, green violence more broadly, wildlife crime, relationships between parks and local/Aboriginal communities, and related questions of conservation governance and practice. My research focuses on Southern Africa and has recently turned to North America. While these regions may seem distinct, they share similar histories of conservation-provoked displacement that enabled the initial creation of protected areas, along with parallel practices of current park-related exclusion. They are also united by innovative activism on the part of (often displaced) communities that has the potential to reinvent the meaning of people-park relations and conservation practice. By shining a comparative light on these two regions, I additionally examine the ways in which the rich Southern African and North American experiences reflect, depart from, and otherwise speak to global trends in conservation and broader political ecological processes. 1. Conservation Politics in the South Africa-Mozambique Borderlands |