Environmental Humanities Seminar with Lindsay Ofrias

Blood of the Earth: On Oil Extraction, Toxic Exposure, and Community-Led Healing in Amazonian Ecuador

Speaker: Lindsay Ofrias, 2024-25 MHC Postdoctoral Fellow

Respondent: Marcia Castro

Lindsay Ofrias is a cultural anthropologist whose research broadly examines the relationship between law, health, and the environment. Her current book project, Beyond the Oil Frontier, uses multi-sited transnational fieldwork to explore efforts for repair and reparations undertaken by communities in Amazonian Ecuador confronting extensive industrial contamination. Building on two years of ethnographic research in Ecuador and international courtrooms, the project delves into the affected communities’ understanding of the interdependence of all life forms, reflecting on the potential and limitations of law, its impact on human and more-than-human life, and the intricate ecologies that mediate collective wellbeing. Committed to engaging a broader public, Lindsay is co-directing a feature-length documentary, RICO, which is related to her book project. Her work has been supported by the Social Science Research Council and her research findings have appeared in Culture, Theory & Critique, Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, and the Edward Elgar Handbook on Oil and International Relations. Lindsay holds a PhD in Anthropology from Princeton University, an MA in Anthropology from the University of Colorado-Boulder, and a BA in Individualized Study from New York University. Previously, she was a “Leadership for the Ecozoic” postdoctoral fellow at McGill University.

Marcia Castro is Andelot Professor of Demography, chair of the Department of Global Health and Population, director of the Brazil Studies Program of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) at Harvard University, associate faculty of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, and faculty member of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.

Her research focuses on the development and use of multidisciplinary approaches to identify the determinants of infectious disease transmission in different ecological settings to inform control policies

Registration is required for this event.

About the Series

The Mahindra Humanities Center presents an Environmental Humanities seminar series with our 2024-25 postdoctoral fellows.