My approach to teaching and mentoring students comes from my commitment to interdisciplinary research, critical scholarship, and collaborative, anti-oppressive work. I approach my teaching and mentoring in ways that encourage students to take ethical responsibility and a sense of social justice through their own research. At the core of this approach is the belief that all teaching and learning happens in a context of unequal relations of power and knowledge that are reproduced on world-wide registers. An important element of my commitment to serve in the Centre for Undergraduate Research Learning is to facilitate opportunities through which Huron students can take advantage of research projects that support local communities.
My approach to teaching courses in the areas of globalization and global development studies is to familiarize students with the ways in which these notions, for example, are deeply embedded in mainstream discourses and practices. Once students critically approach globalization and global development, they are exposed to alternative ways of knowing and acting in the world that defy the scholarly and political conventions of our times.
My research focuses on the ways in which Mapuche communities in the region of Patagonia, Argentina (puelmapu territories) enact practices that shape and articulate a political project of territorial autonomy and self-determination within the context of the Argentine state. My work explores the contradictions and tensions that are found between state-sponsored efforts to recognize some Indigenous peoples’ demands and Mapuche claims for self-determination and autonomy. Building on my ethnographic work with Mapuche organizations and communities, my current research has three main directions. First, I examine development discourses on a global-scale around practices of resource extractivism and the practices of resistance that emerge from within the affected communities. Second, I study co-management projects within conservation areas (e.g., National Parks) as a site of accommodation, negotiation, and resistance that inform ongoing processes of state formation and Mapuche self-determination. Finally, I work on the politics of interculturality as a Mapuche epistemological challenge to modern ways of knowing and as part of a broader agenda of decoloniality.