Associate professor of environmental studies and American Indian and Indigenous studies
College of Letters & Sciences
Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies
As a critical cultural geographer, I use ethnographic methods to examine power dynamics within environmental governance, across a range of scales.
At the local scale, I examine what I term “grassroots environmental governance," or community efforts to influence environmental decision-making processes. Simultaneously, my research investigates ideologies, policies, and power relations of élites at the global scale to better understand the power structures conditioning the forms and outcomes of community-based resistance to industrial expansion.
I have studied Indigenous Kanak communities’ responses to mining projects in New Caledonia, and community engagements with biodiversity conservation in New Caledonia, Malaysia, and the U.S.
Currently, my research focuses on resistance to oil and gas pipelines.
Research Interests
- Grassroots engagements with industrial expansion
- Indigenous rights and ecosystem conservation
- Just transitions away from fossil fuels
Selected Publications & Presentations
- Bondi, B. and L.S. Horowitz, Scope-shifting: Bureaucracy, Energy Justice, and the Dakota Access Pipeline. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space.
- Horowitz, L.S., The double movement and the triple-helix: Divestment, decommodification, and the Dakota Access Pipeline. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space.
- Horowitz, L.S., “Conflicts of interests” within and between elite assemblages in the legal production of space: Indigenous cultural heritage preservation and the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Geographical Journal.
- Horowitz, L.S. Indigenous rights and the persistence of industrial capitalism: Capturing the law-ideology-power triple-helix. Progress in Human Geography.