Team

FIREPOL //

Ph.D., Principal Investigator, Full Professor in Political Science, University of Turin

Lorenza Fontana

Lorenza B. Fontana is a Professor in Political Science in the Inter-university Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning at the University/Polytechnic of Turin, in Italy. Her research has addressed questions around the ethnic politics of socio-environmental conflicts, the domestic politics of human rights of vulnerable groups, and, more recently, the contentious politics of wildfires. She led the collaborative project Playing with Wildfire, which studied fire-related conflicts using participatory theatre in Bolivia and is author of the book Recognition Politics. Indigenous Rights and Ethnic Conflict in the Andes (Cambridge University Press 2023).

M.Sc., ERC Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Turin

Luisa Escobar

Luisa is a biologist with an interest in the interphase between humans and natural landscapes. She has developed research around soil science, conservation, forest and fire socio-ecology. She has also worked in rural contexts in Mexico and Southern Africa, in projects related to education, environmental awareness, ethnobiology, participatory mapping and conservation. Luisa is currently developing research in southeast Angola, studying human-forest interactions where she is particularly interested in local ecological knowledge, ethnoforestry, fire knowledge, the effects of conflict in natural ecosystems and natural resource governance.

Ph.D., ERC Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Turin

Nicola Manghi

Nicola is an anthropologist with a strong interest in the intersections between sovereignty and the ecological crisis. As part of his Ph.D. at the University of Turin (2017-2021) and his two consecutive post-doc fellowships at EHESS (2022-2023, 2023-2024), he has conducted sustained ethnographic research in Tuvalu, Fiji, and Aotearoa/New Zealand. He is affiliated to the Centre de Recherche et Documentation sur l’Océanie (CREDO) of Marseille (France) and to the Anthropology Program of the University of Waikato, in Kirikiriroa/Hamilton (Aotearoa/New Zealand). Parallel to his ethnographic work, he has translated into Italian works by Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers and published several papers on their contribution to conceptualizing political ecology.

Ph.D., ERC Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Turin

Alessandro Tinti

Alessandro Tinti is a postdoctoral researcher with an interdisciplinary background in international relations, political ecology, and environmental anthropology. His previous research explored the relationship between extractivism and identity formation in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. He obtained a PhD in Political Science and International Relations from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies and has been a research fellow at the American University of Iraq – Sulaimani and the Autonomous University of Barcelona. As a consultant, Alessandro coordinated the research component of the UNODC project “STRIVE Juvenile: Preventing and Responding to Violence against Children by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups” in Iraq and collaborated with the European Commission’s Knowledge Centre on Migration and Demography.

M.Sc., ERC Doctoral Research Fellow, Polytechnic of Turin

Greta Mazzocchi

Greta Mazzocchi is a PhD student in Urban and Regional Development at the Polytechnic University ofTurin. Her research primarily examines migration governance and the power dynamics between local and central State relations. Greta has conducted fieldwork in Tunisia and worked with various Italian NGOs on issues related to migration, sustainable development, and gender. She has also gained experience with UN bodies on topics such as peacekeeping and peacebuilding in Latin America and UN Security Council reform. Additionally, she is affiliated with the LINKS Foundation, where she assists in project management in the research domain “Innovation in Culture, Society, and Public Administration” (ICS). As a member of the FIREPOL team, her work investigates the interconnections between human and non-human mobility and fire events in Latin America.

ERC Project Manger, University of Turin

Angela Dolores Lucca

Angela graduated in Sociology at the University of Turin in 2022, where she has also been a research assistant researching how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the youth labor market. At the same time, she has worked, and continues to work, as a Project Manager for a small non-profit organization that engages in theatrical training and the organization of cultural events.

FOREMER FIREPOL TEAM MEMBERS

M.Sc., ERC Research Associate, Polytechnic of Turin

Celia Wilson Garcia (2024)

Celia Wilson Garcia is a research associate, and her research involves exploring the nexus between wildfires and health of rural community members from a feminist political ecology of health framework. Stemming from an interdisciplinary background in biology, chemistry, and One Health, she is interested in connecting large-scale political interests and power relations, social institutions, and economic processes with human-environment interactions. By synthesizing biophysical processes, management systems, and diverse narratives, the research seeks to uncover the intricate dynamics between environmental conditions, social systems, and health outcomes. As part of FIREPOL, Celia is focusing on the interconnections and interdependencies between wildfire and health in the Okavango Delta in Angola and the Tonle Sap Lake region in Cambodia.

ERC Research Associate, Polytechnic of Turin

Anna Chirumbolo (2024)

Anna Chirumbolo graduated in Ecological and Environmental Sciences (BSc Hons) from the University of Edinburgh in 2020. She worked as a data analyst and business consultant for a large corporation called Sopra Steria Spa and is currently finishing a MSc in Environmental Monitoring, Protection and Restoration at the University of Turin. Anna is part of FIREPOL as a research fellow doing quantitative analysis on fire and conflict in countries such as Bolivia and Angola.

Ph.D., Samuel Trask Dana Professor of Governance and Sustainability at the School for Environment and Sustainability; Professor of Public Policy at the Ford School

Arun Agrawal

Arun Agrawal, PhD, emphasizes the politics of international development, institutional change, environmental conservation, and sustainability in his research and teaching. He has written critically on Indigenous knowledge, community-based conservation, common property, population resources, and environmental identities. Agrawal coordinates the University of Michigan’s Collaborating Research Center for the International Forestry Resources and Institutions network. He carries out research in central and east Africa as well as South Asia. His work has appeared in Science, PNAS, Conservation Biology, Development and Change, among other journals. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2018. Preceding his work at U-M, Agrawal was educated at Duke University, the Indian Institute of Management, and Delhi University and has held teaching and research positions at Yale, Florida, McGill, Berkeley, and Harvard among other universities.

Ph.D., Professor of Environment and Society at the Graduate School of Geography; Research Associate of the Centro Peruano de Estudios Sociales, Peru; Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Manchester

Anthony Bebbington

Anthony Bebbington, PhD, is the Milton P. and Alice C. Higgins Professor of Environment and Society at the Graduate School of Geography. He is also a Research Associate of the Centro Peruano de Estudios Sociales, Peru and a Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and has held fellowships from the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, the Free University and Ibero-American Institute of Berlin, the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, the Fulbright Commission and the Inter-American Foundation. Tony’s work addresses the political ecology of rural change with a particular focus on extractive industries and socio-environmental conflicts, social movements, indigenous organizations, livelihoods. He has worked throughout South and Central America, though primarily in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, and more recently in El Salvador.

PhD, Head of Tropical Diversity at the Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh; Adjunct Professor at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa

Caroline Lehmann

Caroline Lehmann, PhD, is currently conducting a field research program focusing on understudied regions such as Madagascar, southern Africa and South-East Asia and how improved understanding of these regions can inform understanding of community assembly and dynamics of grassy biomes. This work is funded by The Royal Society, NERC, Darwin Initiative and DEFRA. Her ‘FunkyBio’ (a play on functional biogeography) research group, collaborates closely with scientists across regions. Caroline is jointly appointed between the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and University of Edinburgh where she is a Senior Lecturer and teaches on the undergraduate Geography programme in the School of GeoSciences. Additionally, she holds an adjunct position with the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa.

Ph.D., Professor of Development Politics, Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of York

Jean Grugel

Jean Grugel is Professor of Development Politics, University of York and Director of the Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre. Her research interests include global political economy, regional/global governance, human rights, global childhoods, children’s work, and care. She is a Co-I on Thanzi la Onse – Health for All and the York lead on Redressing the Gendered Health Inequalities of Displaced Women and Girls in Contexts of Protracted Crisis in Central and South America (ReGHID). Jean also leads IGDC project on Gender and Health Systems in Low and Middle Income Countries After COVID-19: the Promotion of Women’s Health and Emerging International Policy

Additionally, Jean is a member of the REF 2021 Sub-Panel 19, Politics and International Studies, the ESRC International Development Advisory Group, the Agencia per a la Qualitat del Sistema Universitari de Calalunya (Quality, Appointments and Promotions Organisation for Universities in Catalunya), and a member of the International Advisory Council of the Institut Barcelona Estudis Internacionals, University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. Jean is an Associate Fellow of the Institute of the Americas at UCL and has served as trustees on a number of NGOs.

PhD; Professor in Political Science at the Université catholique de Louvain

Benoît Rihoux

Benoît Rihoux is full professor in political science at the UCLouvain, Belgium. He plays a lead role in the development and diffusion of comparative methods, in particular Configurational Comparative Methods (CCMs) and Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). He is engaged in diverse disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary projects, also covering management, evaluation, development, health systems research and medicine, involving mixed- and multimethod designs and QCA. He coordinates COMPASSS, the global CCMs network (https://compasss.org/ ), and is initiator and joint Academic Coordinator of the Methods Excellence Network (https://www.methodsnet.org/ ), a global and pluralist network of social science methods experts. Besides, he is engaged in the Global Wo.Men Hub (https://gwmh.org/ ), an action/think tank pushing for equality and collaboration between women and men.

Ph.D, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, African Climate Development Insititute

Glynis Humphrey

Glynis is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the African Climate and Development Initiative in the Towards Equitable and Sustainable Nature-based Solutions (TES MbS) project. Her current research project is centered on understanding the socio-economic benefits and constraints of Nature-Based Solutions in achieving social equity in southern Africa. Glynis core interests are in people (indigenous knowledge), biodiversity, climate, fire, ecosystem services, and the use of trans and inter-disciplinary research to address adaptive management and conservation policies.
Glynis’s postdoctoral project at the Plant Conservation Unit (UCT) involved investigating woody cover change in relation to climate, fire, and land use history in north-east Namibia using remote sensing, GIS and repeat photographs. Her PhD (2018) research focussed on the use inter-disciplinary methods to investigate the spatial and temporal fire regime patterns and knowledge exchange between rural livelihood sustainability and governance to address fire management policy in Namibia.

Ph.D, Associate Professor of Environmental and Politics, Universiti Malaya

Helena Varkkey

Dr Helena Varkkey is an Associate Professor of Environmental Politics at the Department of International and Strategic Studies, Universiti Malaya. Her areas of expertise include transboundary haze governance in Southeast Asia and global palm oil politics. Her monograph on “The Haze Problem in Southeast Asia: Palm Oil and Politics” was published by Routledge in 2016. Her latest book is a collection of essays on the politics of haze and the environment in Southeast Asia called “The Forests for the Palms” published by ISEAS Singapore in 2021. Dr Helena has almost two decades of experience in qualitative research, including conducting fieldwork, interviews, and focus groups among various government and non-government stakeholders, and has built up extensive research networks in countries across ASEAN. She has edited and produced reports for the Academy of Sciences Malaysia, UNICEF, and the ASEAN Secretariat.

Ph.D, Assistant Lecturer in philosophy, business and academic ethics, Bucharest University

Radu Uszkai

Radu Uszkai is the ethics advisor for FIREPOL. He works as an assistant lecturer at the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences (Bucharest University of Economic Studies) where he teaches Philosophy, Business Ethics and Academic Ethics. He is also a researcher at the Research Center in Applied Ethics, University of Bucharest (www.ccea.ro) where he is currently involved in the ERC Starting grant project avataResponsibility (“Avatar agency. Moral responsibility at the intersection of individual, collective, and artificial social entities in emergent avatar communities”). Radu got his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Bucharest in 2015, with a thesis on the ethics of copyright and digital piracy. His research is largely focused on applied ethics (mainly on new and emerging technologies), political philosophy and the philosophy of pop culture. His work was published in journals like Ethics and Information Technologies, Philosophy & Technology and Frontiers in Robotics and AI. His first book, dedicated to the ethics of copyright, will be published with the Bucharest University Press (2024, forthcoming).

Ph.D, Research fellow in Political Science, University of Siena

Linda Basile

Linda Basile is serving as data advisor for FIREPOL. She is a Research fellow in Political Science at the University of Siena and co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal European Political Science. She has expertise in social science research methods, with a focus on content analysis and survey research. Her main research areas include territorial politics, electoral politics, public opinion and party politics. She is currently the Research Unit leader for the PRIN 2022 Project UNVEIL (UNderstanding Vulnerability to Expand Insight on Local units) and participates in the EuComMeet project. Previously, she joined several European project, including EuEngage, and the the IMAJINE project, both funded by the European H2020 program. Working on several collaborative projects, she also gained significant experience in data management, open access, ethics, dissemination, and communication. Additionally, she is also member of the Itanes (Italian National Election Studies) Association, which promotes a research programme on voting behaviour in Italy.