Prospective Graduate Students / Postdocs
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JULIET LU
Assistant Professor
Research Classification
Research Interests
conflicts and governance issues around resource extraction and intensive land use
transnational land investments
promotion of monoculture plantations at the expense of more biodiverse systems
private sector sustainable governance initiatives
Relevant Thesis-Based Degree Programs
Research Options
I am available and interested in collaborations (e.g. clusters, grants).
I am interested in and conduct interdisciplinary research.
Biography
Dr. Juliet Lu is a political ecologist and a scholar of Global China. She is Assistant Professor of Environmental Governance & Business at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. She is jointly appointed in the Department of Forest Resources Management and the School of Public Policy & Global Affairs.
From 2020-2022 she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Atkinson Center for Sustainability at Cornell University studying the role of Chinese rubber firms in global initiatives to make the natural rubber supply chain more sustainable. She received her PhD from the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management at the University of California, Berkeley in August 2020. Her doctoral research explored the political economy and territorial implications of Chinese agribusiness investments and development cooperation initiatives in rubber in Laos.
Her broader research interests include the impacts of China’s growing demand for raw materials on land and resource management in Southeast Asia, the intersection between resource governance and state formation in borderland regions, and discourses of environmental protection and sustainable development in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative. She co-hosts the Belt and Road Podcast (https://www.buzzsprout.com/196316), which features emerging research and nuanced discussions on China’s growing impact on the developing world.
From 2009-2013, Juliet worked as a researcher in the environmental sector in China (World Agroforestry Centre, Yunnan) and Laos (Centre for Development and Environment, Vientiane) where she studied agroforestry, communal forest management, market-based sustainability initiatives, and the spatial analysis of large-scale land concessions.
Research Methodology
Political Ecology
qualitative methods
Publications
- For Profit or Patriotism? Balancing the Interests of the Chinese State, Host Country and Firm in the Lao Rubber Sector (2022)
The China Quarterly, 250, 332--355 - Grounding Chinese investment: encounters between Chinese capital and local land politics in Laos (2021)
Globalizations, 18 (3), 422--440 - Great expectations: Chinese investment in Laos and the myth of empty land (2019)
Territory, Politics, Governance, , 1--18 - Development cooperation with Chinese characteristics: Opium replacement and Chinese rubber investments in northern Laos (2017)
In China's Backyard: Policies and Politics of Chinese Resource Investments in Southeast Asia, , 154-181 - Tapping into rubber: China’s opium replacement program and rubber production in Laos (2017)
The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44 (4), 726--747 - Coping with climate-induced water stresses through time and space in the mountains of Southwest China (2012)
Regional Environmental Change, 12 (4), 855-866
Membership Status
Member of G+PS
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Program Affiliations
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