Cornelia Helmcke

political ecology, environmental justice and democracy, resource struggles, community land ownership, multispecies research, decoloniality, Latin America, Colombia, Scotland

I am 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.

PhD in International Environment and Development Studies from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (June 2021): “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.