Andrea Sempértegui
Assistant Professor of Politics, Paul Garret Fellow (starting Fall 2025)
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Maxey Hall 127
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509-522-4426
Andrea Sempértegui is an Assistant Professor of Politics and a Paul Garrett Fellow at Whitman College, and a member of the anti-extractive collective Comunálisis based in Quito, Ecuador. She teaches and writes on Indigenous politics, environmental and feminist movements, conflicts over territory and natural resource extraction, and decolonial thought in Latin America. Her publications in English and Spanish include peer-reviewed articles for Politics and Gender (2019), Journal of International Women’s Studies (2020), Antropologías del Sur (2022), Society & Natural Resources (2023), and Studies in Social Justice (2023). She has written essays and book reviews for The New York Review of Books, Alternautas, Verso and NACLA. She is co-editor of a translated book by the Bolivian sociologist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: Eine Reflexion über Praktiken und Diskurse der Dekolonisierung (Unrast Verlag, 2018).
She is currently working on her book, Forest Politics: The Mujeres Amazónicas' Fight against Extractivism in Ecuador, about the territorial struggle of the Mujeres Amazónicas, a group of Indigenous women leaders who have organized against oil and mining projects in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Previously, she was a Visitor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a Member at the Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture in Giessen, Germany, a Visiting Researcher at Universidad Andina Simón Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador, and a Visiting Researcher at UC Davis. From 2020 to 2021 she was a Visiting Instructor of Anthropology and Sociology and of Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the Justus Liebig University of Giessen in Germany in 2021.
Indigenous politics, environmental and feminist movements, struggles over territory and natural resource extraction, and decolonial thought in Latin America
Ph.D. Sociology
Justus Liebig University, Giessen (Germany)
September 2021
M.A. Political Theory
J. W. Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main (Germany)
September 2015
B.A. Political Science
Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich (Germany)
July 2012
Edited Books
Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: Eine Reflexion über Praktiken und Diskurse der Dekolonisierung, edited by Sebastian Garbe, María Cárdenas and Andrea Sempértegui (Münster: Unrast Verlag, 2018). [Link]
Journal Articles and Book Chapters
"Subsidios y Moratorias: Cómo Avanzar Hacia un Ecologismo Popular,” co-authored with Geografía Crítica Ecuador, Comunálisis and YASunidxs. Levantamientos, Insurrecciones y Paros. Dinámica de la Disputa Social en Ecuador, edited by Alejandra Santillana, Stalin Herrera and Esteban Daza. CLACSO: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (2024).
“Ontological Conflicts in the Plurinational State: The Case of Indigenous Resistance against the Mirador Mega-Mining Project in Ecuador,” co-authored with Michelle Báez, Society & Natural Resources, 1-18 (2023). [Link]
“Weaving the Spiderweb: Mujeres Amazónicas and the Design of Anti-Extractive Politics in Ecuador,” Studies in Social Justice, Special Issue “Women in Movement and Feminisms: Critical Materialisms and Environmentalisms,” 17(2), 204-221 (2023). [Link]
“La Selva Viviente como Selva Política: Prácticas de Hacer-Selva en la Lucha de las Mujeres Amazónicas en Ecuador,” Antropologías del Sur, Dossier Temático “Transformaciones Locales para un Cambio Global” (2022). [Link]
“Fighting the Planetary Mine: The Frente Nacional Anti-Minero in Ecuador,” Property Will Cost Us the Earth. Direct Action and the Future of the Global Climate Movement, Verso Reports series, introduced by Andreas Malm and edited by Jessie Kindig. London: Verso Books (2022). [Link]
“Sustaining the Struggle, Taking Over the Space: Amazonian Women and the Indigenous Movement in Ecuador,” The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Race and Gender, edited by Shirley-Anne Tate and Encarnación Gutiérrez-Rodríguez. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (2022). [Link]
“La Defensa Territorial más allá de la Resistencia: Mujeres Amazónicas Tejiendo Rexistencia en Ecuador,” Etnicidades en disputa: nuevos caminos, nuevos desafíos, edited by Encarnación Gutiérrez-Rodríguez, Sebastian Garbe, Andrea Silva-Tapia, Andrea Sempértegui and María Cárdenas. Revista Iberoamericana 20(75), 227-232 (2020). [Link]
“Decolonizing the Anti-Extractive Struggle: Amazonian Women’s Practices of Forest-Making in Ecuador,” Journal of International Women’s Studies, Special Issue “In Medias Res: Decolonial Interventions,” 21(7), 118-134 (2020). [Link]
“Indigenous Women’s Activism, Ecofeminism, and Extractivism: Partial Connections in the Ecuadorian Amazon,” Politics and Gender, 1-28 (2019). [Link]
“Reflexionen über die Minga aus den Anden: Praktiken der Partizipation in Gemeinschaft,” co-authored with Kuymi Tambaco, Wissenschaft und Frieden (W&F) (2019). [Link]
“Diálogos de (Re)existencia Indígena Afro-Latinxs: Descolonialidades Posibles,” co-authored with Katucha Bento, Heriberto Ruiz Ponce and Louis Di Paolo, Altenautas.net (2019). [Link] [English Version]
Reviews
Review of Sebastian Garbe, Weaving Solidarity. Decolonial Perspectives on Transnational Advocacy of and with the Mapuche (Transcript Verlag, 2022), Alternautas 9 (1) (2022). [Link]
Review of Teresa Velásquez, Pachamama Politics: Campesino Water Defenders and the Anti-Mining Movement in Ecuador (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2022), NACLA (2022). [Link]
Review of Silvia Federici, Revolución en Punto Cero. Trabajo Doméstico, Reproducción y Luchas Feministas (Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños, 2013), Argumenta Philosophica Vol. 2 (2018).
“Cosmopolitics among Entangled Worlds: Indigenous Politics in the Highlands of Peru,” Review of Marisol de la Cadena, Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice Across Andean Worlds (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015), KULT_online 50 (2017). [Link]
Blog Posts and Journalistic Publications
“Ecuador’s Historic Strike,” The New York Review of Books (October, 2022). [Link]
“La Fiebre de Oro Supera la Fiebre de Covid-19,” co-authored with Romano Paganini, Mutantia.ch (May, 2020). [Link] [German Version]
“Ecuador: Covid-19, Temblor y Abismos,” Latin American Perspectives Blog (April, 2020). [Link]
“La Violencia, de la Cual no se Habla,” Mutantia.ch (October, 2019). [Link] [German Version]
2024 Social Actions Initiative Award from Sociologists for Women in Society (on behalf of Comunálisis)
2022 Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen (JLU) Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences
2022 Second Place in the German Latin America Research Association (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutsche Lateinamerikaforschung - ADLAF) Dissertation Awards