Dr Ruben Schneider
| Biography | Ruben is a political ecologist. His research uses an ethnographic approach to examine the local experiences of global interventions for conservation, security, development, and peace. This form of research focuses on the everyday manifestations of interventions, uncovers their often unseen and unpredictable effects, and illuminates the processes of power that shape them. Before joining RGU, Ruben was a Lecturer and Teaching Fellow in Sociology at the University of Aberdeen. |
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| Research Interests | In his ESRC-funded PhD, Ruben used an ethnographic approach to examine how indigenous communities in north-west Namibia experience, understand, and respond to militarised conservation in the context of a recent wave of rhino poaching. His research highlights both the promises and risks of combining community-based and militarised approaches to conservation and development, while honing in on how local people might be able to transform global logics of environmental governance from below. Through partnerships and collaboration with the Namibian Government, NGOs, community organisations, and private sector, the research helps to promote more sensible, locally acceptable and sustainable interventions. Whilst Ruben’s work is most firmly rooted in the field of Political Ecology, he also engages debates in Peace and Conflict Studies, Development Studies, Green Criminology, and Conservation Social Science, amongst others. Further areas of research include issues related to environmental governance, community conservation, global-local power relations, indigenous perspectives, colonialism, gender, and violence. |
| Teaching and Learning | Module Coordinator: SS4078 Community, Place, and Identity SS3026 Qualitative Research Methods SS2062 Digital Societies, Digital Minds SS1050 Understanding Social Change Further co-taught modules: SS4053 Media, Culture and Society SS3052 Social Work Research and Practice SS1006 Sociology of Identity, Difference and Deviance |