Hanne Cottyn is an historian interested in human-nature relations, rural transformations, commodity frontiers, and socio-environmental conflict. Her work combines historical insight in local dynamics in the rural Andes with a critical global perspective.
Since 2008, she has spent extensive time in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia working with indigenous and peasant communities, grassroots movements, NGOs and scholars. In 2014, she completed a PhD in History at Ghent University in her native Belgium with a study on indigenous struggles for community land rights in late 19th and early 20th century Bolivia. After working with environmental activist movements in Peru, she became a postdoctoral fellow, first at Ghent University and in recent years at the University of York. Her postdoctoral research explores the historical trajectories of land and conservation conflicts in Andean highland communities, in collaboration with Bolivian, Peruvian and Colombian partners.
Hanne sits on the board of CATAPA, a social movement that struggles for social and environmental justice in mining-impacted communities, particularly in Latin America. She is an active member of the Commodity Frontiers Initiative and the Belgian Latin America network ENCUENTRO.
