We are delighted to welcome Alexander Dunlap back to the EXALT podcast for a conversation about his latest work. Xander has been looking at rare earth element mining, lithium mining, and solar panel lifecycles in the United States. Right now, he is writing up the research on the disposal and decommissioning of solar panels, which is where our conversation kicks off. Xander found that even in highly regulated states it is more economically efficient to just landfill them rather than recycle them ...
Jul 25, 2025•1 hr 4 min
This month we are joined by Taru Salmenkari who does research on Chinese NGOs. Taru has a long career studying China, NGOs, and the role of civil society. We are super lucky to catch Taru right as her new book comes out, Global Ideas, Local Adaptations: Chinese Activism and the Will to Make Civil Society . By “exploring the boundaries, fringes, and inner workings of civil society” this book “investigates local forms of political agency in China in light of the globalization of political values, ...
Jun 27, 2025•49 min
This month we are very excited to be trying out a different format as we are joined by two former guests, Manuela Picq and Markus Kröger. Manuela and Markus both have work related to resistance efforts and we thought that their respective work would come together into a quite interesting discussion. First each gives insight into their respective experiences and then we talk collectively about their experiences. Manuela gives us a peek into her work as a water defender in Ecuador, while Markus sh...
May 30, 2025•47 min
This month we had a compelling conversation with Manuela Picq, who is a Senior Lecturer in the Departments of Political Science and Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies at Amherst College (USA). However, this academic work is just part of Manuela’s life as she lives between Massachusetts and Ecuador where she is an activist defending the water and Indigenous livelihoods. Manuela blends academics, activism, legal action, and land defense. Manuela gives us insight into what it means to be a water...
Apr 25, 2025•37 min
This month we are honoured to be joined by one of our colleagues from Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki. Tiina Seppälä came to Global Development Studies by way of International Relations. Her work has looked at global inequalities, poverty, war, and social justice issues among many others. Activism is also an area of interest and Tiina has worked with peace activists in the UK, slum and women’s rights activists in South Asia, as well as asylum seekers in the Finnish conte...
Mar 28, 2025•1 hr
In this bonus episode of the TreesForDev podcast we are delighted to be joined by Project PI, Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes and Maria Holmberg who works for FIDA in Tanzania. Maria H. moved to Tanzania with her parents when she was 1 year old, grew up there, and has been working with different development projects in Tanzania since 1984. Currently, Maria H. is working with tree planting and environmental education. Maria H. tells us about some of the positive impacts of tree planting in this context b...
Mar 25, 2025•52 min
We are delighted to present a really interesting conversation on a yet unexplored facet of extractivism. This month we talked with Saana Hokkanen who is a doctoral researcher in Global Development Studies at University of Helsinki. Saana’s main interest is in the concept of soil extractivism, which is “is a form of capital accumulation based on systemic erasure of soils multispecies life.” Saana gives us insight into how soil is more than “just dirt” and the ways in which modern, industrial agri...
Feb 28, 2025•41 min
This month we are honored to be joined by Evan Sullivan who is an assistant professor at SUNY Adirondack in Upstate New York. Evan is a historian whose research interests examine the intersections of disability, war and gender in the modern era, especially in the World War One era. Evan’s interest in this era stems from his master’s studies and from some of the archival collections that he found researching his master’s thesis. Evan gives us insight into his research trajectory, including how he...
Jan 31, 2025•44 min
In this brief update, Sophia shares warm season's greetings and outlines what the audience has to look forward to coming up in 2025! Want to learn more about the TreesForDev project? www.treesfordev.fi
Dec 31, 2024•2 min
This month we talked to Sergio Fernández Bravo, who is a fellow doctoral researcher from Global Development Studies at University of Helsinki. Sergio is interested in the relationship between natural sciences and politics, specifically in the Global South. His current research focuses on synthetic pesticides and how they are used as devices of power and influence the epistemic arrangements within the Mexican Green Revolution. Sergio gives insight into the history of pesticide use in Mexico and t...
Dec 27, 2024•52 min
This month we were honoured to be joined by Rauna Kuokkanen, a Research Professor of Arctic Indigenous Politics at the University of Lapland (Finland) and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Over the course of her career, Rauna’s work has focused on comparative Indigenous politics and various forms of violence, from structural settler-colonial to interpersonal gendered violence, and theorized Indigenous feminism. She has also critiqued the narrow epistemic founda...
Nov 29, 2024•45 min
This month we are delighted to be joined by Prof. Bruno Ramamonjisoa from the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar. Bruno is the Director of the PhD School on Natural Resources Management and Development and coordinator of the Applied Research Laboratory at the School of Agronomy. Bruno is one of our key collaborators in Madagascar and an expert on sustainable management of natural resources. In this interesting and wide-ranging conversation, Bruno gave us insight into some of the issues on ...
Nov 26, 2024•22 min
This month we are happy to be joined by Markus Kröger and Peter Dewees. Markus is a professor of Global Development Studies at University of Helsinki and one of the co-PIs of the TreesForDev Project. Peter is retired from a 30 plus year career with the World Bank. During his time with the World Bank Peter worked on many different projects, with a focus on why rural people cultivate and plant trees, wood fuel use, and the management of the Miombo woodlands. While his focus was on Eastern Africa, ...
Oct 29, 2024•51 min
This month we are honored to be joined by Jojo Mehta from Stop Ecocide International, which is an international advocacy organization with the goal of making ecocide a crime. Jojo gives us insight into the continuous thread throughout her life that led her to this work. Her “outrage” moment was when she learned about fracking. Her work in the anti-fracking community introduced her to the late Polly Higgins, with whom she co-founded Stop Ecocide International. Jojo gives us insight into what kind...
Oct 25, 2024•53 min
This month we are delighted to be joined by Mario Blaser. Mario is a cultural anthropologist and an Associate Professor of Geography and Archaeology at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. Mario has engaged in ethnographic work with communities in many different parts of the world, including in Paraguay and Canada. His fascination with how people lived in other places is rooted in his early experiences living in a small town in Southern Argentina and interacting with visitors passing through...
Sep 27, 2024•42 min
In this episode we are joined by Marketta Vuola and Matthieu Pierre. Marketta is a project researcher from the TreesForDev project leading the work package on Madagascar. Matthieu Pierre is starting his PhD at the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar, focusing on protected areas and restoration in Madagascar. In this conversation we talk about the general context of Madagascar, including its high biodiversity, and the role that conservation and ecological restoration play in Madagascar. Mark...
Sep 24, 2024•39 min
This month we are delighted to be joined by Andrea Brock, who is a political ecologist at University of Sussex. Andrea works with forest defenders and environmental movements looking at the responses from state and corporate actors to ecological dissent. Andrea shares with us the trajectory of her research career which was influenced by being brought up in the German Rhineland in proximity to the world’s largest open-cast lignite mine. She shares with us her insights into the actions of the mini...
Aug 30, 2024•44 min
In this episode we are joined by Professor Steffen Böhm from University of Exeter School of Business and project PI and Associate Professor Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes from Hanken School of Economics. In this conversation we explore carbon markets and how they work (or do not work) and what their connection is to so-called green development. We talk about compliance markets and voluntary markets. In the voluntary carbon markets, anyone can develop a project that plants trees in exchange for carbon c...
Aug 27, 2024•42 min
In this episode we are joined by Forrest Fleischman from the University of Minnesota and the project principal investigator, Maria Ehrnstöm-Fuentes from Hanken School of Economics. Forrest gives us insight into the work he has done in the Indian context in relation to tree planting and the long-term outcomes of tree planting schemes. India has had a long history of tree planting programs, but are they always successful? In the western Himalaya, where Forrest is working about half the planting ta...
Jul 30, 2024•46 min
This month we are delighted to welcome Maija Lassila back to the EXALT podcast for our second conversation. Maija is post-doctoral researcher at Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS) and recently received her doctorate from Global Development Studies at University of Helsinki. Maija takes to the North and gives us an overview of the work she did during her doctorate. We talk about reindeer herding and the impacts of resource extractivism (and the threat of future resource extract...
Jul 26, 2024•52 min
In this month’s episode we are delighted to be joined by Brazilian agroecologist, Karen Nobre Krull, who has worked on projects in federal environmental and research institutions in Brazil, such as EMBRAPA and ICMBio, and in the last year with the NGO Imaflora. Her work focuses on developing strategies and implementing actions with rural communities for the agroecological transition of productive systems, regenerative agriculture, and rural development, incorporating environmental, social, and e...
Jun 28, 2024•41 min
In this episode we are joined by Linda Annala Tesfaye and Bikila Warkineh. Linda is a project researcher from the TreesForDev project leading the work package that is looking at Ethiopia. Bikila is the Head of Plant Biology and Biodiversity Management at Addis Ababa University and works as Associate Professor of Ecology. His research centers on the broad area of the ecological sciences and ecosystems ecology. He is strongly interested in the science, politics, and policies of natural resource ma...
Jun 25, 2024•44 min
We are joined by Marketta Vuola from University of Helsinki’s Global Development Studies. In this conversation Marketta gives us insight into the work that she is doing in her doctoral research. She started her academic career interested in conservation and national parks, but during her field work she kept running into gold mining and its role in the rural areas of Madagascar. Marketta gives insight into what artisanal means on the ground in Madagascar, which is not a simple thing to define as ...
May 31, 2024•45 min
In this episode we are joined by Ossi Ollinaho and Natacha Bruna. Ossi is a project researcher from the TreesForDev project leading the work package that is looking at Mozambique. Natacha is scholar activist and researcher who is doing a post-doctoral project at Cornell University in the Global Development Department, previously she worked at our project partner at Observatório do Meio Rural (OMR), in Mozambique. Natacha coordinated the research line on models of rural development and her resear...
May 28, 2024•33 min
In this episode we are joined by Marketta Vuola and Zo Randriamaro. Marketta is a project researcher from the TreesForDev project leading the work package on Madagascar. Zo works for the Research and Support Center for Development Alternatives-Indian Ocean (RSCDA-IO) / Centre de Recherches et d’Appui pour les Alternatives de Développement-Océan Indien (CRAAD-OI). The RSCDA-IO / CRAAD-OI, which is a pan-African, non-profit organization. “Its mission is to promote sustainable development alternati...
Apr 30, 2024•40 min
This month we are really excited to have a conversation with Rubén Vezzoni, who is one of our University of Helsinki colleagues from the Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal and Regional Change. His work looks at different aspects of the political economy of the EU’s green transition, with case studies on solar panels, hydrogen, and post-growth agri-food systems. In our conversation we focused in on “green” hydrogen and whether in practice it can live up to the grand narratives that are to...
Apr 26, 2024•57 min
This month on the EXALT podcast we are super excited to be joined by Xander Dunlap for a precedent-breaking third conversation. Xander is a research fellow at the Institute for Global Sustainability at Boston University and a visiting research fellow at Global Develop Studies at University of Helsinki. Xander talks to us about his new book from Pluto Press, “This System is Killing Us: Land Grabbing, the Green Economy and Ecological Conflict.” This book looks at the last 10 years of work Xander h...
Mar 29, 2024•56 min
In this episode we are joined by Ossi Ollinaho and Máriam Abbas. Ossi is a project researcher from the TreesForDev project leading the work package that is looking at Mozambique. Máriam is a researcher from Observatório do Meio Rural (OMR), in Mozambique, who is coordinating the research line “Environment and Rural Areas”, which explores, among other topics, the impacts of climate change on agriculture, the causes of deforestation and mainstreaming biodiversity in the agricultural sector. Ossi a...
Mar 26, 2024•32 min
Welcome to the debut episode of the limited series TreesForDev project podcast. In this episode we are honored to be joined by the project principal investigators, Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes and Markus Kröger, from Hanken School of Economics and University of Helsinki respectively. In this conversation, they introduce us to who they are and what types of questions are being investigated in the TreesForDev project. This project examines the dynamics of ecological restoration involving tree planting ...
Feb 27, 2024•45 min
This month we are overjoyed to be joined by fellow University of Helsinki Global Development Studies doctoral researcher, Martta Kaskien. Martta is currently working with the project Citizenship Utopias in the Global South: The Pursuit of Transformative Alternatives in Times of Civic Disillusionment. Her research is centred on feminist activist narratives in Kenya using ethnographic methods. She gives us insight into her research trajectory and how she got to this topic in this context, and how ...
Feb 23, 2024•38 min
