Professor Frances Cleaver
Chair in Political Ecology
Research Overview
My research is concerned with how we can understand natural resource governance in order to inform progressive social change. Institutions really matter in social and political life – they are the rules (often implicit) and arrangements through which people organize their lives, access resources and give order and meaning to their world. Critically, they are also channels through which power is exercised, reproduced and challenged. Working from a political ecology perspective I am particularly interested in how institutions shape the governance of water, land and forests, and impact on people’s livelihoods.
