María Belén Noroña
I am a human geographer working at the intersection of grassroots grounded research, decolonization, and transformative justice. I apply my work to oil governance, ethnic territories, raced and gendered colonial formations, Indigenous epistemology, non-representational cartography, and networked space and place. I have a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon and a trajectory mixing activism and place-based development and education with communities in the Andes of Latin America.
I am currently collaborating with rural and Indigenous communities, particularly women in the Amazon rain forest. Collaborations seek to understand human-environmental interactions through racial and gender lenses. I pay particular attention to how social difference is spatialized in human bodies and territories, forming complex fabrics of human-environmental landscapes and territories.
In my scholarship, I partner with grassroots organizations such as the Pachaysana Foundation to sustain long-term social justice projects with rural and Indigenous communities in Latin America. In my teaching, I use decolonial methods and a curriculum inclusive of marginalized voices. Students interested in working with me should be able to make their research relevant to social needs and justice processes in meaningful ways.