Mira Kakonen
PhD (Global Development Studies, University of Helsinki)
I am a scholar of political ecology and an ARC DECRA Fellow in the Resources, Environment & Development Group, Crawford School of Public Policy. Before joining the ANU I had just started as a lecturer in Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki. Over the past 15 years I have worked in various research projects on the politics of environment and development, with particular focus on how water resources are made and governed in the Mekong Region, Southeast Asia. My DECRA project ‘Volatile Rivers and the Infrastructure Politics in the Mekong Region’ explores entanglements of rivers, infrastructure, and power relations as well as how these are increasingly shaped by a globalizing China and climate change. I am also a member of a Kone Foundation funded research project ‘Repair and responsibility in ruined environments of the global South’ that studies the new politics of restoration and the ways in which people living at the extractive frontlines reimagine and recraft their livelihoods.