Congratulations to Anna Sturman on the award of her doctorate

Anna Sturman, who is currently acting as SEI’s Content Editor, has been awarded her PhD in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. Her research centres on the political economy of climate change, particularly theorisations of political power and socio-ecological transformations from an eco-Marxist perspective.

The thesis provides a fresh perspective on stalled emissions mitigation in Aotearoa New Zealand by applying a materialist ecofeminist lens to existing critical perspectives. Offering an alternative orientation to the crisis, the thesis embeds the history of Aotearoa New Zealand’s struggle to achieve climate change mitigation within the broader history of its capitalist development, focusing on how non-human nature has been understood and valued as a condition and component of this development.

The political implications of this history are a key tenet of the thesis, offering a theorisation of crisis, the political economy and the state which suggests that climate justice cannot be divorced from anti-capitalist struggles to decommodify and democratise socio-ecological reproduction.

To cap off her time as a Doctoral Fellow with SEI, Anna recently gave a PhD seminar, drawing on a key theme from her thesis to explore capitalist state as a key terrain of inquiry for environmental and social justice movements. The seminar, which is available here, draws upon both the contemporary revival of state theory scholarship and on-the-ground responses from movements navigating rolling crises.

The Institute congratulates Anna on this achievement and we look forward to supporting the next stage of her career.

Anna is an Honorary Associate of the Political Economy Department of the University of Sydney for 2022.

Header image: Thomas Hetzler, via Unsplash.