Round Table: Landscapes and Logics of Extractivism

Imani Jacqueline Brown is an artist, activist, and researcher from New Orleans. Her work investigates the continuum of extractivism, which spans from colonial genocide and slavery to contemporary fossil fuel production and enfolds police and corporate impunity. These investigations expose the layers of violence and resistance that comprise the foundations of U.S. society and imagine a horizon of ecological reparations. Imani received her MA with distinction from the Centre for Research Architecture (CRA) at Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2019. She is currently an economic inequality fellow with Open Society Foundations, a researcher with Forensic Architecture, a visiting researcher at the CRA, and a visiting lecturer in Environmental Architecture at the Royal College of Art.

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes is an architect, urban designer, Assistant Professor of Urban Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Principal of the urban design agency OMNIBUS. She studies how design disciplines can critically engage with issues of resources, the mainstream economy, governance, and ecological/social justice. She has been guest professor at TU Berlin (2018-2019), program director of the Master of Advanced Studies in Urban Design at the chair of Marc Angélil (2014-2019), and co-curator of the 12th International Architecture Biennale of São Paulo (2019). Charlotte is a founding member of the Parity Group and Front, activist networks dedicated to improving gender equality and equity in architecture. She holds a PhD from ETH Zürich.

Thea Riofrancos is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Providence College, an Andrew Carnegie Fellow (2020-2022), and a Radcliffe Institute Fellow (2020-2021). Her research focuses on resource extraction, renewable energy, climate change, green technology, social movements, and the left in Latin America. These themes are explored in her book, Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020) and her co-authored book, A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso Books, 2019). Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Boston Review, The Baffler, n+1, Dissent, Jacobin, among others. She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and serves on the organization›s Green New Deal Campaign Committee.