Biography
Dr Natacha Bruna, from Mozambique, is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Department of Global Development at Cornell University. Her research resonates with critical development and agrarian studies and has focused on the agrarian change brought about by the intersection of extractivism, land and resource grabbing, and environmental policies, particularly looking at the implications on global patterns of accumulation and rural livelihoods. Green extractivism and the resulting new dynamics regarding land, labour and nature are explored in order to analyse social reproduction and implications on rural subsistence. Most recently, her research aims at further exploring land/resource rush and rural life under the context of market-based climate solutions and the growing imposition of greener land uses, production of carbon credits and the exploitation of natural resources towards a “just” energy transition.
Dr Bruna holds a PhD in Development Studies within the Political Ecology research group at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS, The Hague) in the Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. She worked as a researcher and is still a member of a Mozambican independent research institution – Observatório do Meio Rural. She is also an associate editor of the Feminist Africa journal.