Gabriela Valdivia

Dr. Gabriela Valdivia is the Class of 1989 William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her work centers on political ecology, natural resource governance, and Latin American studies, particularly in Ecuador and Bolivia. She holds affiliations with the Center for Galapagos Studies, Institute for the Environment, and Institute for the Study of the Americas.

Education includes a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Minnesota (2005), M.A. from UNC-Chapel Hill (1999), and B.A. in Anthropology/Geology from Macalester College (1996). Her research explores oil extraction impacts, indigenous rights, and environmental justice through projects like Crude Entanglements, examining oil's socio-ecological effects in Ecuador.

Key publications include Oil, Revolution, and Indigenous Citizenship in Ecuadorian Amazonia (2017) and co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Critical Resource Geography (2021). Her work bridges academia and activism, addressing extractivism's human and ecological costs.

Major awards include the Carl O. Sauer Distinguished Scholarship Award (2023) and Tanner Teaching Award (2020). She advises numerous graduate students on topics ranging from Amazonian resurgence to urban oil politics. Current projects include studies on Waorani self-determination and decolonial methodologies.