land rights, forests, biodiversity conservation, climate change, extractive industries, migration, earth observation, political ecology, Central America
Laura Aileen Sauls joined the Global Affairs Program in 2022 as an Assistant Professor focusing on the global environment. Before joining the program, she was previously a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of Sheffield (UK) and a Teaching Fellow at the College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, MA USA). Previous to pursuing her PhD, Laura was a worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on multilateral environmental policy, including related to climate change, sustainable development, and Arctic environmental cooperation.
Her research draws on political ecology and critical development studies to examine how resource-governing institutions change in the context of global environmental crises and political economic shifts. Incorporating an environmental justice lens and a deep commitment to engaged and collaborative research, Laura works with Indigenous and forest-based community organizations across Mexico and Central America to understand what just and sustainable resource governance might look like across scales. Her most recent projects explore how emerging remote sensing and near-earth observation technologies intersect with ongoing land rights struggles and governance arrangements.
Sauls, Laura Aileen, Jaime Paneque-Gálvez, Mónica Amador-Jiménez, Nicolás Vargas-Ramírez, and Yves Laumonier. 2023. “Drones, Communities and Nature: Pitfalls and Possibilities for Conservation and Territorial Rights.” Global Social Challenges 1 (published online ahead of print 2023): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1332/AJHA9183.
Sauls, Laura Aileen, and Victor López Illescas. 2023. “Redefining Rights-Based Conservation through Philanthropy: The Ford Foundation in Mesoamerica.” Conservation Science and Practice 5 (5): e12942. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.12942.
Mack, Elizabeth A., Laura Aileen Sauls, Brad D. Jokisch, Kerstin Nolte, Birgit Schmook, Yifan He, Claudia Radel, et al. 2023. “Remittances and Land Change: A Systematic Review.” World Development 168 (August): 106251. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2023.106251.
Cuba, Nicholas, Laura A Sauls, Anthony J. Bebbington, Denise Humphreys Bebbington, Avecita Chicchon, Pilar Delpino Marimón, Oscar Diaz, Susanna Hecht, Susan Kandel, Tracey Osborne, Rebecca Ray, John Rogan, Viviana Zalles. 2022. “Emerging hot spot analysis to indicate forest conservation priorities and efficacy on regional to continental scales: a study of forest change in Selva Maya 2000-2020.” Environmental Research Communications 4(071004). https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620/ac82de.
Sauls, Laura Aileen, Anthony Dest, and Kendra McSweeney. 2022. “Challenging Conventional Wisdom on Illicit Economies and Rural Development in Latin America.” World Development 158 (October): 105996. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.105996.
Blume, Laura Ross, Laura Aileen Sauls, and Christopher A. C. J. Knight. 2022. “Tracing Territorial-Illicit Relations: Pathways of Influence and Prospects for Governance.” Political Geography 97 (August): 102690. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102690. (co-first author)
Pritchard, Rose, Laura Aileen Sauls, Johan A. Oldekop, Wilhelm Andrew Kiwango, and Dan Brockington. 2022. “Data Justice and Biodiversity Conservation Justicia.” Conservation Biology: e13919. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13919.
GLOA 615 - Justice and the Global Environment
GLOA 100 - Intro to Global Affairs
INTS 210 - Sustainable World
PhD Geography, Clark University (Worcester, MA USA)
MA Geography, Clark University
MPhil Development Studies, University of Oxford (UK)
BA International Relations and Environmental Science & Policy, College of William & Mary (Williamsburg, VA USA)