Adrienne Johnson

Adrienne Johnson is a human geographer who earned a PhD from Clark University. Her dissertation looked at the political ecology and critical resource geographies of Ecuador’s palm oil industry with a specific focus on Afro-Ecuadorian, smallholder, and company participation in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification scheme. She received an MA in geography and a BA in international development studies and political science from York University, Canada. Before joining the Environmental Studies program in 2018, Adrienne was a 2015-17 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada postdoctoral scholar at the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University.

Adrienne specializes in critical approaches to environmental governance and extraction in both Ecuador and Indonesia, and teaches courses on nature-society relations, environmental justice, and gender & environment. She has published in World Development, Geoforum, Development and Change, Journal of Rural Studies, and other journals. She is co-editor of a recent special issue on post/anti-colonial and feminist reflections on the methods and methodologies of natural resource industries fieldwork appearing in Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. She is a Research Fellow with the Earth System Governance Project and was recently elected as a Board Member for the Conference of Latin American Geography (CLAG).

• Research Fellow, Earth System Governance Project, Utrecht University
• Associate Fellow, Centre for Research on Latin American and the Caribbean (CERLAC), York University

• PhD, Geography, Clark University
• MA, Geography, York University
• BA (Hons), International Development Studies, York University

• Mellon Foundation Humanities Teaching and Research Award, 2023; 2020
• Star Route Farm Faculty Award, 2022
• University of San Francisco, Mentor of the Year, 2021
• 6+ YOU Anti-Racism Grant, 2021
• Social Sciences and Humanities Council (SSHRC) of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2015-17

• Kenney-Lazar, M., Johnson, A., Sultana, F., Himley, M., Bebbington, A., Havice, E., Rice, J., & Osborne, T. (2023). Relational environmental governance: A critical framework for praxis with the material world. Journal of Political Ecology 30(1) :677–698.
• Chase, M., & Johnson, A. (2023). Oil extraction and Indigenous women: Examining the necropolitics of the settler state in the Bakken region. Human Geography. Online first.
• Johnson, A., & Sigona, A. (2022). Planetary justice and ‘Healing’ in the Anthropocene. Earth System Governance, 11, 100128.
• Johnson, A. (2022). The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and transnational hybrid governance in Ecuador’s palm oil industry. World Development, 149, 105710.
• Johnson, A. (2021). ‘Engaged Research with Smallholders and Palm Oil Firms: Relational and Feminist Insights from the Field’. Handbook of Critical Resource Geography, H. Himley, E. Havice, G. Valdivia (Eds). Routledge.
• Johnson, A., Zalik, A., Mollett, S., Sultana, F., Havice, E., Osborne, T., Valdivia, G., Lu, F., Billo, E. (2020). ‘Extraction, Entanglements, and (Im)Materialities : Reflections on the Methods and Methodologies of Natural Resource Industries Fieldwork’, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space
• Johnson, A., Zalik A. (Eds)., ‘Introduction’
• Johnson, A., ‘Engaged Research in Oppositional Corporate Spaces’ 
• Johnson, A. (2019).‘The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil’s National Interpretation Process in Ecuador: Fitting Global Standards into Local Contexts’. Journal of Rural Studies, 71.
• Johnson, Adrienne. (2017). Pudrición del Cogollo and the (post-)neoliberal ecological fix in Ecuador's palm oil industry. Geoforum. 80.
• Johnson, A. (2014). Ecuador’s National Interpretation of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO): Green-Grabbing through Green Certification? Journal of Latin American Geography, 13(3), 183–204. 
• Bebbington, Anthony & Bornschlegl, Teresa & Johnson, Adrienne. (2013). Political Economies of Extractive Industry: From Documenting Complexity to Informing Current Debates. Development and Change.