Nina Moeller

My academic background is in philosophy, sociology and anthropology.

Since 2005 I have been working in the Amazon, with Kichwa communities and federations in the Upper Napo, Ecuador. I also maintain relations with Shipibo community leaders in the Ucayali, Peru and have worked in Latin America and Europe as a consultant to indigenous federations, NGOs, and the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. I wrote my PhD on 'The Protection of Traditional Knowledge in the Ecuadorian Amazon: A Critical Ethnography of Capital Expansion ' (2010).

Before I joined CAWR in October 2019, I was awarded two fellowships – Independent Social Research Foundation Fellow in the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford (2016-2017), where I remain a Research Associate; and Marie Curie Research Fellow in the School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester (2017-2019). I am on the Advisory Board of the embryonic Real Food Campaign in the UK and on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Political Ecology.

Additionally, I have been involved in a variety of social, cultural and political movements since the 1990s and I am passionate about herbal medicine and land-based education for children. My current research focus will be developed here: subsistencematters.net

Vision Statement:
My overall vision is to create knowledge through and for action, for a life worth living for all.

While the details remain to be ironed out collectively, this implies from the outset a world free of slavery and all other forms of oppression.
More specifically to my current role, I seek to generate knowledge in collaboration with a diversity of others, to (1) expose processes of domination, and (2) create a more just and sustainable society by (3) transforming the dominant food (and water) systems.

This basically means that I want to understand the status quo, articulate alternatives and elaborate pathways to get there.

Research Interests:
Political ecology; Ethnography; Participatory methodologies; Post-development; Agroecology; Subsistence livelihoods; Indigenous and social movements; Biogenetic resource politics; Commons; Traditional knowledge and IPRs; Amazon; Green economy; Property; Feminist epistemology.