Cornelia Helmcke

I am a political ecologist fascinated by local knowledge systems and how they can reflect more-than human needs and, as such, help solve environmental challenges on different scales.

I am currently co-leading the interdisciplinary research project “Community priorities in the creation of sustainable futures: an exploration of community-led decision making in peatland restoration projects in rural Scotland” which seeks to understand the potentials and challeneges for communities to take desicions reflecting own socio-economic but also ecological interests in the case of peatland restoration and carbon offsetting.

My PhD in International Environment and Development Studies from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (June 2021) is titled “The Defence of Territory: Contested environmental politics at the El Quimbo hydroelectric dam, Colombia”. I investigated the different knowledge regimes in tension that created a contested reality around the social-environmental impacts of the large hydroelectric dam ‘El Quimbo’ in the South of Colombia.

I have a Master of Science in Human Ecology from Lund University and a Bachelor of Science in Geography from the Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel.