Speaker: Erin Kitchell
Time: 12:00 pm- 1:00 pm
Venue: 206 Ingraham Hall
Bio
Erin Kitchell is the Managing Director for Land, Environmental, and Climate Justice at Namati, where she leads on learning and strategy for grassroots justice initiatives that put the power of law in people’s hands. She has 15 years of experience leading research and supporting community-based programs on land rights and environmental governance. Erin completed her PhD in Geography at UW-Madison in 2023. Her dissertation focused on the micropolitics of decentralization and land tenure reform in Senegal and Mali. It traces how Fulani pastoralists’ claims to land produce new forms of political identity rooted in a vision of local autonomy. In contrast to the dominant emphasis on the form and design of elected institutions, Erin’s research focuses on the crucial role that cultivating a political community and thick processes of participation play in democratic decentralization. Erin has been a USAID Research and Innovation Fellow and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.