Gabriela Valdivia
Professor of Geography
Carolina Hall 315
919-962-3871
valdivia@email.unc.edu
Gabriela Valdivia is Professor in the Geography Department at UNC-CH. Her research examines the political dimensions of natural resource governance in Latin America: how Latin American states, firms, and civil society appropriate and transform resources to meet their interests, and how capturing and putting resources to work transforms cultural and ecological communities. Her latest research project, “The Impact of Oil Extraction, Regulatory Policy, and Environmental Practice on Native Amazon and Afro-Ecuadorian Communities,” funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), examines how the everyday lives of Afro-descendants and Amazonian peoples are shaped by oil infrastructure in Ecuador. She grew up in Peru and conducted ethnographic research in Ecuador and Bolivia, and brings these experiences into her introductory courses on Latin America and advanced undergraduate courses on the political ecology of rural Latin America.
