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Hanna  Laako

Hanna Laako

Senior Researcher

Yliopistotutkija

Researcher, Docent in Social and Public Policy, Doctor in Political Science
Politics/International Relations, Forests/Conservation, Geopolitics/Borderlands, Women’s Rights, Indigenous Peoples/Postcolonialism, Regions/Latin America.

Department of Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies

hanna.1.laako@uef.fi | +358 50 325 2061

Currently research on the Mesoamerican Maya Forest 2019-2024, funded by the Mexican CONACYT (2019-2020) and the Finnish Kone Foundation (2020-2024).

Previous research: Conservation Politics in the Transboundary Usumacinta River Basin (2017-2019), Mexican and Latin American Midwiferies (2014-2016), Mexican Southern Borderlands (2012-2014), Decolonization and the Zapatista Movement (2006-2011).

Member of the Mexican National System of Researchers, level 1 (CONACYT-SNI 2019-2021).

Previous affiliations: El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR, Mexico), Centro del Cambio Global y la Sustentabilidad (CCGS, Mexico) and Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS, Mexico).

Political Forests - the Maya Forest

The Guardians of the Maya Forest

Transboundary Conservation is a strategy that promotes biodiversity conservation along and across borders. Such is the case of Maya Forest, created by conservationists and scientists to safeguard biodiversity in the rainforest borderlands of Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, and inherited from the ancient Mayans. Currently composed of heritage sites and biosphere reserves, the Maya Forest contains many paradoxes and challenges. Yet, it reinforces nature states and builds subtle environmental international relations. Read the discussion articles in the Versus-online magazine.

Transboundary conservation politics in the spotlight of an International Relations scholar

During her years in Mexico, Senior Researcher Hanna Laako took a large leap in the multidisciplinary research of global politics. Empirical and fieldwork-based research is slowly gaining relevance in International Relations. Read the interview by Sari Eskelinen.

Different Routes: In Kalimantan and MesoAmerica, nature needs protection without leaving people behind

Somewhere far away, biodiversity is dwindling and rainforests are being cut down. Nature conservation is a hot topic of conversation, but people who live in the midst of environmental disputes are often overlooked in such debates. Science journalist Mikko Pelttari asked researchers of sparsely populated border regions how we could better understand areas with the most to protect and the most to lose. Read the project-interview by Mikko Pelttari in the Kone Foundation Different Routes-series.

Publications

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