Dr. Elisabet Rasch is a researcher at the Wageningen University & Research, Netherlands. In her research she looks at how (activism towards) mega projects of natural resource extraction and energy production transform practices and meanings of citizenship and democracy. The research is rooted in the observation that firstly, the ownership of resources (and how they are extracted) shape the ways people organize around them and (re)negotiate their relation with the state and secondly, that democratic institutions inform the ways that power relations transform in the field of energy production and subsoil natural resource extraction.

To get a grip on the ways individuals and organized groups contest and reproduce categories of in- and exclusion at this extraction-energy production/democracy-citizenship nexus, Dr. Rasch uses engaged ethnographic research methods and thematic analysis. In addition, close collaboration with civil society organizations and activists is central to her research approach.

It´s important for the dutch scientist to look for alternative ways to disseminate research findings and establish a platform for interchange between academia and civil society organizations. The regional focus of her research is Latin America, and more recently she has started working on the Netherlands as well. 

Recent publications:

• (2017). Citizens, Criminalization and Violence in Natural Resource Conflicts in Latin America. European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies/Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe, (103), 131-142.
• (2016).  'Nos ven como terroristas porque defendemos las tierras que ellos invadían. Conflictos sobre la gestión de los recursos naturales en el noroccidente de Guatemala', in Gema Sánchez Medero & Rubén Sánchez Medero (Eds), Guatemala: gobierno, gobernabilidad, poder local y recursos naturales, pp. 153-172
• (2017). Practices and Imaginations of Energy Justice in Transition. A Case Study of the Noordoostpolder, the Netherlands, Energy Policy (with M. Köhne).