Appointed as Global Chair in 2018/2019, Professor Anthony Bebbington was previously Milton P. and Alice C. Higgins Professor of Environment and Society at the Graduate School of Geography, Clark University. Since January 2021, he is the new Director of Natural Resources and Climate Change at the Ford Foundation.
An esteemed international scholar, Professor Bebbington's research examines social and environmental resource conflicts in Latin America, with a focus on mineral industries and the mining sector in Peru. In 2018-2019, he held an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship, during which he was based at the University of Melbourne and developed a new project on the governance of resource extraction under the conditions of climate change.
Hosted at Bath by Dr Roy Maconachie in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences, Professor Bebbington's Global Chair appointment has been a catalyst for strengthening interdisciplinary approaches to international development and resource conflicts at Bath, including new trans-regional links between research in Latin America and Africa. His presence has lent further support to the development of an emerging interdisciplinary Bath research hub on extractive industries and development, which has recently been established as the Centre for Natural Resource Extraction, Sustainability and Social Justice.
Professor Bebbington said:
Bath has always been a point of reference for work on Development Studies and Social Policy, so it is a real pleasure to be able to spend time with colleagues here under the auspices of the Global Chair scheme. In particular, the plan is to collaborate with Dr Roy Maconachie and others whose work, like mine, addresses the relationships between extractive industry, development and social mobilization for policy change. With Dr Maconachie in particular, this allows us to think comparatively across small and large scale mining, Latin America and Africa, different types of minerals, and the social and bio-physical worlds.
His new position at Ford Foundation promises opportunities for further collaboration, including research on natural resources and energy transitions.
Activities at Bath
Since his appointment as Global Chair in 2018/2019, Professor Bebbington has:
delivered a public lecture Resource extraction, climate change and the right to live well: long and short routes to policy change (25 July 2019).
worked with Dr Maconachie to develop joint research, including support for a grant application and jointly-authored publications on extractive industries.
been an expert panel speaker during the screening of Dr Maconachie's award-winning film “Voices from the Mine” to policy-makers at the UN Headquarters (June 2019).
been an anchor to further develop interdisciplinary research on extractive industries and resource conflicts at Bath, including support for new transregional links between research in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.
