My research interests bridge interdisciplinary fields, including political ecology, human geography, and critical communications studies, with a focus on environmental and climate justice, socio-ecological distribution conflicts, and resource governance.
My research has taken various forms throughout my professional and academic career but generally engages with the question of how hegemonic discourses on environment and development shape the production of space and subjectivities.
My current work focuses on the political economy of climate, emphasizing the examination of institutions and power structures that perpetuate historical inequalities affecting rural and Indigenous territories in Latin America, specifically in the Andean region. Informed by a decolonial approach to the study of postcolonial nations in Latin America, I explore the meaning-making processes that create territories of extraction and appropriation, as well as the role of race (particularly whiteness) in the transnational accumulation of capital.
I was part of the founding cohort of graduate students in the Human Rights Investigations Lab at UCSC, where I led undergraduate students in open-source investigations to uncover and verify human rights violations in the Americas. I am also a co-founder and member of the Extractivism and Society Research Cluster at UCSC.
Areas of interest
Political Economy of Climate, Political Ecology, Critical Human Geography, Environmental Communications, Just transition, Environmental Racism in the Americas
Publications
Watanabe Farro, A. “Discursive Geographies of Extraction: Towards a Territorialized Application of Cultural Political Economy of Extractivism in Chile and Peru.” Extractive Industries and Society, under revision, 2026
Watanabe Farro, A., Hernández Garavito, C., Mejía, A., Méndez, C., Molina-Vital, C., Noles Cotito, M., Pereyra Chávez, N. & Smith, A.(2023) Protests in Peru: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Structural Crisis, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 32:1, 157-175, DOI: 10.1080/13569325.2023.2219209
Artiga-Purcell, J. A., Chiasson-LeBel, T., Leiva, F., & Watanabe-Farro, A. (2023). Disaster Extractivism: Latin America’s Extractive Shock Therapy in the Age of COVID-19. Latin American Perspectives, 50(4), 172-192. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X231187886
Public scholarship
Watanabe Farro, A., Hernández Garavito, C., Mejía, A., Méndez, C., Molina-Vital, C., Noles Cotito, M., Pereyra Chávez, N., & Smith, A. (2023, July 30). Protestas en el Perú: perspectivas interdisciplinarias para entender una crisis estructural. Travesía.
Chiasson-LeBel, T., Artiga-Purcel, A., & Watanabe-Farro, A. (2020, October 1). Pandemia y extractivismo: una contaminación colonizadora cruzada. Alainet.org
Teaching and Mentoring
Courses taught:
Environmental Racism in Latin America (LALS 179, Winter 2024)
Academic Literacy and Ethos: Social Justice and Community (JRLC 1, Fall 2023)
I facilitated instruction in Latin American and Latino Studies across courses in cultural studies, research methods, and introductory seminars (2020-2026). Supervised undergraduate researchers in open-source human rights investigations (2019-2022).
I hold a Ph.D. in Latin American and Latino Studies from UC Santa Cruz, an MA in Environment, Development, and Policy from the University of Sussex (UK), and a BA in Communications.
Before pursuing academia, I worked as a social communicator for environmental organizations in Peru, where I designed and implemented strategic communication campaigns supporting environmental policy change.