The Power, Ecology and Climate Research Group in the Department of International Development invites you to a book talk on 'Threatening Dystopias', featuring Dr Kasia Paprocki (London School of Economics), Dr Luis Andueza, Dr Ambarish Karamchedu and Prof Alex Loftus as discussants.

About the speaker

Kasia Paprocki

About the discussants

Dr Luis Andueza

Luis is a human geographer with a background in anthropology and critical development studies. His work focuses on critical theory, the political ecology of uneven and combined development in Latin America, and local responses to these processes on indigenous and rural territories. Luis has experience conducting research on a range of Latin American contexts (including Mexico, Chile, and Peru) with both academic and nongovernmental organisations, with an emphasis on participatory research methods, interdisciplinarity, and the intersections between culture, political economy, uneven development, and human/environment relations.

Dr Ambarish Karamchedu

Ambarish is a Lecturer in International Development Education. His work focuses on India and explores the themes of agrarian and climatic change, neoliberalism, deagrarianisation, GM crops, the hydropolitics of groundwater, and caste discrimination in labour markets. He completed an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) 1+3 funded MSc and PhD in International Development at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. He also completed an ESRC postdoctoral research fellow position in the Department of Geography at King's College London.

Professor Alex Loftus

Alex is a political ecologist with a keen interest in the political economy of water. Having carried out research on struggles over water in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Durban (South Africa) in the early 2000s, he has more recently focused on the financialization of water infrastructure in London (UK) and the right to water globally. Alex’s research seeks to better understand the processes and relations that give rise to a profoundly unequal distribution of resources. Water has provided one lens through which he has sought to pursue such an understanding, and historical-geographical materialism has provided a framework through which to make sense of these processes.