Staff profile

My research examines struggles around indigeneity, territory and the politics of resource extraction in Latin America.

This work is grounded in a decade and a half of engaged ethnographic research in sites of hydrocarbon extraction in Bolivia’s Chaco region.

Theoretically, my approach brings together insights from anti-colonial and Marxist traditions to offer a novel account of how colonial relations are reproduced and contested at resource frontiers.

My research is methodologically experimental, combining ethnography with participatory, counter-mapping, and audio-visual methods.

My book, Limits to Decolonization, examines the dynamics and legacies of Bolivia’s Native Community Lands (TCOs), from the neoliberal 1990s to the neoextractivist government of Evo Morales. It was awarded the 2019 APSA Award for Best Book in Race, Ethnicity and Comparative Politics. The book featured in this 2019 Human Geography book review forum. A Spanish translation of the book is being published by the leading Bolivian press Plural Editores.

Alongside my position at Durham, I am Assistant Professor (0.5) at the Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen.

Before joining Durham in 2018, I held research positions at the University of Copenhagen and the University of California, Berkeley, as Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow. I completed my PhD in Geography at the University of Cambridge in 2014.

• Economy & Culture

Authored book

• Anthias, P. (2018). Limits to Decolonization: Indigeneity, Territory, and Hydrocarbon Politics in the Bolivian Chaco. Cornell University Press.

Chapter in book

• Anthias, Penelope (2012). Territorializing Resource Conflicts in “Post-Neoliberal” Bolivia: Hydrocarbon Development and Indigenous Land Titling in TCO Itika Guasu. In New Political Spaces in Latin American Natural Resource Governance. Haarstad, H. Palgrave MacMillan. 129-153.
• Anthias, P. (2012). Regulación ambiental de los hidrocarburs en el Campo Margarita, Tarija. In Jamás Tan Cerca Arremetió lo Lejos: Inversiones Extraterritoriales, Crisis Ambiental, y Acción Colectiva en América Latina. Peralta, P. & Hollenstein, P. Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Rimisp, Ediciones La Tierra. 51-88.

Journal Article

• Anthias, Penelope (2022). The Pluri-Extractivist State: Regional Autonomy and the Limits of Indigenous Participation in Gran Chaco Province. Journal of Latin American Studies 54(1): 125-154.
• Anthias, Penelope & Hoffmann, Kasper (2021). The making of ethnic territories: Governmentality and counter-conducts. Geoforum 119: 218.
• Anthias, Penelope (2021). Rethinking territory and property in indigenous land claims. Geoforum 119: 268-278.
• Anthias, P. (2019). Ambivalent cartographies: exploring the legacies of indigenous land titling through participatory mapping. Critique of Anthropology 39(2): 222-242.
• Anthias, Penelope (2017). Ch’ixi landscapes: Indigeneity and capitalism in the Bolivian Chaco. Geoforum 82: 268.
• Anthias, Penelope (2018). Indigenous Peoples and the New Extraction: From Territorial Rights to Hydrocarbon Citizenship in the Bolivian Chaco. Latin American Perspectives 45(5): 136.
• Anthias, Penelope & Radcliffe, Sarah A. (2015). The ethno-environmental fix and its limits: Indigenous land titling and the production of not-quite-neoliberal natures in Bolivia. Geoforum 64: 257.

Other (Print)

• Anthias, Penelope (2019). Limits to decolonization: Indigeneity, territory, and hydrocarbon politics in the Bolivian Chaco. Human Geography 12(3): 57-58.