Dr Jose Cortes-Vazquez

Jose is critical environmental social scientist, drawing on different disciplines  such as Social Anthropology, Human Geography and Political Ecology and specialising in the study of environmental governance, nature conservation and sustainable livelihoods in Europe. He received a PhD in Environmental Studies from the Pablo Olavide University (Spain, 2011) as well as a BSc in Environmental Sciences (Pablo Olavide, 2005) and an MA in Social Anthropology (University of Kent, 2009). He worked as researcher and lecturer at the University of Manchester, the Pablo Olavide University, University College London and National University of Ireland Galway, before joining SIID as a Marie Curie postdoctoral research fellow which finished in 2016. Jose now works as a senior research fellow at the University of A Coruña (Spain).

Research interests:
In the last decade, through ethnographic work and more than a dozen publications, Jose has made a contribution to the study of the political and historical dimensions of nature/society relations and conflicts and the critical examination of sustainability, top-down policies and centre-periphery relations within the EU as these are performed in natural protected areas policies and people-park conflicts in Spain and Ireland. He has also contributed to the political ecology of environmental discourses in land-use planning and neorural movements in Spain.

At present, he is engaged in a detailed examination of the neoliberalization of environmental governance in post-crisis Europe through the study of the roll-back of the state from nature conservation and the roll-out of new institutions and market mechanisms. Through these past experiences he has carved out a niche for research on the intersections of institutions, legal frameworks and social movements in environmental governance after the 2008 crisis. He has already initiated work in this new field through research collaboration with colleagues in Spain on participatory policies in heritage governance, including natural heritage. His goal for the near future is fully to develop his expertise in this new field through new research work and publications.