New Faculty: Assistant Professor of International Studies Nicholas Carby-Denning
Assistant Professor of International Studies Nicholas Carby-Denning received his Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Chicago with a certificate in Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
Carby-Denning's teaching and research in International Studies focus on contemporary ecological crises, the racialized postcolonial geographies of resource extraction, and critiques of development and extractive capitalism.
The fields upon which he draws are: cultural anthropology, political ecology, environmental studies, social movement studies, science studies, critical indigenous studies, and postcolonial studies. He teaches courses on topics ranging from globalization and human rights to social movements for environmental justice and indigenous sovereignty, to multispecies ethnography and science studies inquiries into the nature of the human and the nonhuman.
His research has been conducted in collaboration with environmental justice NGOs and indigenous, mestizo, and Afro-Ecuadorian social movements and engages their critiques of development, such as “extractivism,” as well as their alternative models, including the “rights of nature,” and translates these theoretical frameworks to a wider audience in order to open a space for scholars and students to imagine and enact other possible futures.