Canel, Eduardo

Eduardo Canel is the Director of the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC) and Associate Professor in the Division of Social Science teaching International Development and Latin American and Caribbean studies. His main academic interests include state-civil society relations; social movements; local participatory democracy; social capital; and decentralization and local governance in Latin America. His current research focuses on the changing nature of state-civil society relations in Latin America resulting from neoliberal restructuring and democratization. His forthcoming book Barrio Democracy in Latin America. Participatory Decentralization and Community Activism in Montevideo (Penn State University Press, 2009) examines the contrasting experiences of participatory decentralization in three working class neighborhoods in Montevideo city, highlighting how much local conditions shaped participatory processes and the outcome of institutional reforms.

Email: ecanel [at] yorku [dot] ca

Idemudia, Uwafiokun

Uwafiokun Idemudia is an assistant professor with the Division of Social Science at York University. He teaches in the International Development, African Studies and Business and Society programmes. His research focuses on corporate social responsibility and development nexuses, political economy and ecology of resource extraction and conflict. His most recent publications have appeared in the Journal of Corporate Citizenship, Journal of Business Ethics, and Resource Policy. Idemudia is at present exploring the structural and systemic constrains facing corporate and governmental accountability in the Nigerian oil industry.

Email: idemudia [at] yorku [dot] ca

North, Liisa

Liisa North is the author or co-author of nine books and about fifty book chapters and journal articles on party politics, civil-military relations, and political economic development processes in Chile, Peru, Peru, and Ecuador; on the civil wars, United Nations peacekeeping missions, and human rights and refugee crises in El Salvador and Guatemala; and on Canadian-Latin American relations, with a particular focus on peace promotion and development assistance. She also has written numerous journalistic pieces published in various magazines and national newspapers. She is the co-editor of a book that emerged from a previous CERLAC-organized conference on conflicts involving mining and petroleum corporations: Community Rights and Corporate Responsibility: Canadian Mining and Oil Companies in Latin America (2006). In  2005, she received the Pio Jaramillo Alvarado Prize in the Social Sciences, awarded annually by FLACSO-Ecuador, with CONESUP and UNESCO, for lifetime contributions to knowledge concerning the Andean Region of South  America.

Email: lnorth [at] yorku [dot] ca

Szablowski, David

David Szablowski is an assistant professor appointed to the Law & Society program at York University.  He is a founding member and coordinator of the Extractive Industry Research Group at York.  His research examines the influence of globalization on domestic, international, and transnational legal authority, with a particular focus on the regulation of extractive industries.
His book, Transnational Law and Local Struggles: Mining, Communities and the World Bank (Hart 2007), explores the multi-scalar nature of a mining conflict in north-central Peru.  The book presents a micro-macro study which examines the intensely local dynamics of this conflict together with the influence of a transnational legal regime managed by the World Bank.  Professor Szablowski is currently engaged in a research project examining the operationalization of emerging transnational norms requiring informed consent or consultation for extractive industry development on indigenous territory.

Email: davidsz [at] yorku [dot] ca

Zalik, Anna

Dr. Anna Zalik teaches in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. Her research concerns the merging of industrial security and development aid, focusing on oil industry responses to social resistance in extractive sites. She conducts ongoing work in Nigeria and Mexico, with new research in the Canadian Tar Sands. Recent publications include "LNG and Fossil Capitalism" in the November 2008 edition of Monthly Review.

Email: azalik [at] yorku [dot] ca