Nina’s academic background is in philosophy, sociology and anthropology – she holds an MSc by Research in Philosophy from Edinburgh University, as well as an MA in Genetics & Society and a PhD in Sociology from Lancaster University. She completed her doctoral thesis 'The Protection of Traditional Knowledge in the Ecuadorian Amazon: A Critical Ethnography of Capital Expansion' in 2010.
Nina has worked in Latin America and Europe – amongst other things as a consultant to indigenous federations, NGOs and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization – and she is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, Coventry University.
Following on from her recent fellowship at Oxford, she is deepening her political ecology research project at SEED, investigating the social and ecological changes brought about by the development of a novel university in the Amazon rainforest. It begins a wider study of initiatives implementing green economy transitions and re-launches her explorations of the 'local' complexities of 'global' socio-ecological change, and of the 'local' manifestations of 'global' discourses. It is entangled with her quest to understand how non-market relations and practices are fostered or undermined in today's world.
