EcoJust. Doing Environmental InJustice: A Theory in Praxis
The project is a multi-sited qualitative research in four locations across Romania, and documents the disproportionate exposure of vulnerable groups to socio-environmental hazards: mining, illegal logging, land grabbing and waste trafficking. I lead the work package looking at the environmental justice issues associated with illegal logging and forest degradation.
Running 2023-2026, hosted at the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania. Funded by the Romanian Government and NextGeneration EU, 760077.
More on the project’s website https://grants.ulbsibiu.ro/ecojust/
Beastly Business: Examining the Illegal Wildlife Trade in Europe
IWT is a policy priority for global institutions, donors and NGOs. However, illegal trade in European species has been overlooked even though Europe is an important site of production, consumption, and transit. This project directly addresses this gap in knowledge, and in doing so delivers new empirical data and a novel analytical framework that synthesises the strengths of two key approaches – political ecology and green criminology. I led the work package looking at brown bear trafficking in Europe from a political ecology perspective.
Running 2021-2023, hosted at Sheffield University, UK. Funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), ES/V00929X/1.
More on the project’s website https://beastlybusiness.org/about/
BIOSEC – Biodiversity and Security: Understanding Environmental Crime, Illegal Wildlife Trade and Threat Finance
The project looked into what constitutes an environmental crime, the responses by the European Union to the illegal wildlife trade, and how new technology is being used to tackle poaching and trafficking. The project aimed to generate new data on the illegal wildlife trade to demonstrate the ways that biodiversity protection and security are linked, as well as providing new approaches to understanding the links between the two. I led the work package Illegal timber trade as a public security threat which looked at the impact of EU regulations on timber trade and securitisation in the Carpathian Mountains.
Running between 2016-2020, hosted at Sheffield University, UK. Funded by the European Research Council, 694995.
More on the project’s website https://biosec.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/home
Romanian Mountain Commons Project
The project researched extensively contemporary land commons in Romania at a moment when their legal status was threatened by policy changes at the national level. I worked as a research assistant involved in ethnographic research, data analysis and dissemination.
Running 2015-2017, hosted at the Institute of Sociology of the Romanian Science Academy. Funded by the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation, PN-II-RU-TE-2014-4-2865.
More on the project’s website, https://romaniacommons.wixsite.com/project
George Iordachescu 