Dr Ariadne Collins
Lecturer
Research areas
Y Ariadne Collins is a Lecturer in the School of International Relations. Her work lies at the intersection of climate change governance, environmental policy and international development. More specifically, she analyses the interplay between market-based conservation and post-colonial development. Her work features an emphasis on processes of racialization and histories of colonialism, and their challenge to the successful enactment of forest governance policies in the Global South.
Ariadne's first book was published in March 2024 by University of California Press. The book, titled Forests of Refuge: Decolonizing Environmental Governance in the Amazonian Guiana Shield, questions the effectiveness of market-based policies that govern forests in the interest of mitigating climate change. The book interrogates the most ambitious global plan to incentivize people away from deforesting activities: the United Nations–endorsed Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiative. Forests of Refuge explores REDD+ in Guyana and neighboring Suriname, two highly forested countries in the Amazonian Guiana Shield with low deforestation rates. Yet REDD+ implementation there has been fraught with challenges. Adopting a multisited ethnographic approach, Forests of Refuge takes readers into the halls of policymaking, into conservation development organizations, and into forest-dependent communities most affected by environmental policies and exploitative colonial histories. This book situates these challenges in the inattentiveness of global environmental policies to roughly five hundred years of colonial histories that positioned the forests as places of refuge and resistance. It advocates that the fruits of these oppressive histories be reckoned with through processes of decolonization.
Ariadne is currently working on a project titled Towards a Political Ecology of Volume. The project investigates the sustainability and equity of governance structures and use practices of the Earth’s commons. It recognizes that the interdisciplinary subfield of political ecology is dedicated towards studying how political economic factors shape human-nature relationships, thereby demonstrating that what is commonly thought of as non-human nature is always co-constituted with social systems. Burgeoning research on volume, however, calls into question both longstanding environmental governance practices and the subfield of political ecology that studies them on account of political ecology’s dependence on a view of the Earth as two-dimensional, through a European, land-centred geographical imagination. Hence, Ariadne’s research aims to bring volume to political ecology, and political ecology to volumetric practices, at a critical time of global environmental change.
Ariadne was awarded a PhD (Summa cum laude) from Central European University in Budapest, Hungary in May, 2017. She holds a Masters in Research (Distinction) from the University of Westminster, London and a Bachelors from the University of Guyana. Prior to joining the University of St. Andrews, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin. She was also a visiting researcher at the Centre for Space, Place and Society at Wageningen University, the Netherlands.
PhD supervision
- Stacia Carrington
- Hira Malik
- Iliana Ilieva
- Daniel Drury
Selected publications
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Open access
A political ecology of atmospheres: a voluminous case study of the Guiana Shield
Collins, Y. A., Mar 2024, In: Political Geography. 109, p. 103048Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
As renewable energy demand rises, mining for minerals in the Amazon is at a critical point
Collins, Y. A., 9 Sept 2024, The Conversation.Research output: Contribution to specialist publication › Article
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Book Review - The Other of Climate Change: Racial Futurism, Migration, Humanism
Collins, Y. A., 30 Apr 2024, In: Global Policy.Research output: Contribution to journal › Book/Film/Article review
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Forests of refuge: decolonizing environmental governance in the Amazonian Guiana Shield
Collins, Y. A., 1 Mar 2024, Oakland, CA: University of California Press. 242 p.Research output: Book/Report › Book
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Open access
From green to black: a voluminous political ecology of the extraction-conservation nexus
Collins, Y. A. & Fletcher, R., 28 May 2024, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Annals of the American Association of Geographers. Latest Articles, 19 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Interview: Forests of Refuge: Decolonizing Environmental Governance in the Amazonian Guiana Shield
Collins, Y. A., 12 Mar 2024Research output: Non-textual form › Digital or Visual Products
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Open access
Governance and conservation effectiveness in protected areas and indigenous and locally managed areas
Zhang, Y., West, P., Thakoli, L., Suryawanshi, K., Supuma, M., Straub, D., Sithole, S. S., Sharma, R., Schleicher, J., Ruli, B., Rodríguez-Rodríguez, D., Rasmussen, M. B., Ramenzoni, V. C., Qin, S., Delgado Pugley, D., Palfrey, R., Oldekop, J., Nuesiri, E. O., Nguyen, V. H. T. & Ndam, N. & 32 others, , 14 Nov 2023, In: Annual Review of Environment and Resources. 48, p. 559-588Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
"Ocean Optimism" and resilience: learning from women's responses to disruptions caused by COVID-19 to small-scale fisheries in the Gulf of Guinea
Okafor-Yarwood, I., van den Berg, S., Collins, Y. A. & Sefa-Nyarko, C., 22 Jun 2022, In: Frontiers in Marine Science. 9, 16 p., 862780.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
Guyana in the eye of the storm in 2021: convergence, stasis and reverberation
Collins, Y. A., 7 Jul 2022, In: Revista de Ciencia Politica. Ahead of print, 22 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
Decolonizing biodiversity conservation
Corbera, E., Maestre-Andrés, S., Collins, Y. A., Mabele, M. B. & Brockington, D., 24 Jan 2021, In: Journal of Political Ecology. 28, p. 889-903Research output: Contribution to journal › Article