Leah HorowitzAssistant Professor

As a critical cultural geographer, I use ethnographic methods to examine grassroots engagements with environmental issues.

By exploring the cultural complexities and power dynamics of tensions surrounding the management and exploitation of natural resources, my research contributes to our understanding of the importance of relationships and networks—and the crucial role emotions play within these—in enabling and shaping various modes of environmental governance. I have studied Indigenous communities’ negotiations with and resistance to environmentally risky industrial expansion in New Caledonia, and various communities’ responses (New Caledonia, Malaysian Borneo, and the U.S.) to both rural and urban biodiversity conservation. Currently, I am focusing on American Indian-led resistance to oil pipelines.

Recent press

The Australian bushfire crisis, WORT Radio, January 10, 2020
Rebroadcast: One million species at risk for extinction, WORT Radio, August 27, 2019

Selected Publications:

Horowitz, L.S. 2022. “Conflicts of interests” within and between elite assemblages in the legal production of space: Indigenous cultural heritage preservation and the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Geographical Journal 188(1): 91-108. https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/geoj.12421

Horowitz, L.S. 2021. Indigenous rights and the persistence of industrial capitalism: Capturing the law-ideology-power triple-helix. Progress in Human Geography 45(5): 1192-1217. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0309132520973447

Horowitz, L.S., A. Keeling, F. Lévesque, T. Rodon, S. Schott, and S. Thériault 2018. Indigenous peoples’ relationships to large-scale mining in post/colonial contexts: Toward multidisciplinary comparative perspectives. The Extractive Industries and Society 5(3): 404-414. https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1XKHk_,52IrqZEN

Horowitz, L.S. 2017. ‘It shocks me, the place of women’: Intersectionality and mining companies’ retrogradation of Indigenous women in New Caledonia. Gender, Place and Culture 24(10): 1419-1440. https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/cfM9yBDNwmNjVMRa4XFM/full

Horowitz, L.S. 2017. Power, cooptation, and the multiplicity of response assemblages: An example from New Caledonia. Dialogues in Human Geography 7(2): 192-196.

Horowitz, L.S. and M.J. Watts (eds.) 2017. Grassroots Environmental Governance: Community Engagements with Industry. Routledge, London. https://www.academia.edu/30075467/Grassroots_Environmental_Governance_Community_engagements_with_industry

Horowitz, L.S. and M.J. Watts. 2017. Introduction: Engaging with industry and governing the environment from the grassroots. Pp. 1-30 in L.S. Horowitz and M.J. Watts (eds.) Grassroots Environmental Governance: Community Engagements with Industry. Routledge, London.

Horowitz, L.S. 2017. Legitimation and grassroots engagements with multinational mining in New Caledonia. Pp. 80-100 in L.S. Horowitz and M.J. Watts (eds.) Grassroots Environmental Governance: Community Engagements with Industry. Routledge, London.

Find a more comprehensive list of my publications in my CV