Dr. Claire Lagier

Dr. des. Claire Lagier defended her PhD in environmental humanities at the RCC in June 2019. Her doctoral research analyzed how agroecology is constructed within the Brazilian Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST)'s base membership and transnational networks, shedding new light on grassroots development alternatives in rural Brazil. Her doctoral work was funded by ENHANCE Marie-Curie ITN (2015-2018), allowing her to do ample fieldwork in Brazil and to be a visiting fellow at KTH Stockholm’s Environmental Humanities Laboratory [1] in May and June 2018. Since 2014, she has been a managing editor for the environmental justice online magazine Uneven Earth [2]. Previously, she obtained a master’s degree in environmental sciences from Université du Québec à Montréal in Canada (2014), during which she focused intensely on the socio-environmental impacts of agribusiness, financialization, land grabbing and unequal land access in Brazil. In 2012-2013, as part of her master’s studies, she undertook an intensive field-based research course in the Brazilian Amazon and two research internships—at Brazil’s Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (political sociology department, research unit for environment and development) and NGO GRAIN [3] (Montreal office). She also holds a bachelor’s degree in international studies from Université de Montréal in Canada (2011). Currently, she is based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her next research aims are to investigate the knowledge and environmental politics of soybean and beef trade between the EU and the Mercosur, and to analyze cultures of organized resistance to agribusiness in the Amazon region.

Dissertation: "Constructing legitimacy? Agroecology within and beyond the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement (MST)"

Selected publications:

La Via Campesina’s Agroecological Militancy at a Crossroads: New Research Avenues for Amazonian Studies._ In_: Ioris, A.A.R. (ed.),_Environment and Development: Challenges, Policies and Practices._Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke (2020, forthcoming).(as co-author) Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective. _White Skin,
Black Fuel. On the Dangers of Fossil Fascism._ London: Verso Books(2020, forthcoming)"Constructing legitimacy? Agroecology within and beyond the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement (MST)", _Environmental Education Research_(2019), DOI: 10.1080/13504622.2019.1687650 [4]

Agroecology as a Way of Life [5]. 360° video for the ENHANCE closing exhibition Umweltschmerz at the Deutsches Museum, Munich, Germany, 17–20 October 2018. with Aaron Vansintjan (ed.). _Uneven Earth in 2016: an Anthology._Montreal: Uneven Earth Press (2017). with Aaron Vansintjan. Uneven Earth: a slow website for environmental justice. _Historia Magistra_ 21: 123-125 (2016).