LINDA PAPPAGALLO

After working in the business of "evidence-based research" through impact evaluations of development initiatives, and monitoring of environmental, social and governance indicators in the extractive industry it became clear to me that in order to critically engage with the realities research narrates (and creates) I needed to explore different rhetorics. This is still the driving force in my work, especially in an increasingly data-driven world. ​Since 2016, I began this journey by walking, working and talking with pastoralists first in Namibia and then Oman, Iran, Tunisia, France and Italy.​​
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The ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) funded my PhD research (2018-2022): “Partir pour Rester” – To Leave in Order to Stay in a community called Douiret, in the arid mountain-scapes of southern Tunisia. Here I explored how human mobility influences how people organize around livestock. Collective herding practices became an integral aspect of my research. As a member of the PASTRES (Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Resilience: Global Lessons from the Margins) research cohort I also began to experiment with film to expand notions of fieldwork, research and representations of pastoral epistemics. ​
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I am interested in how sound, film, photography, poetry and comics are used for collaborative and critical-action-research fostering critical views on “development” and neoliberal environmentalism in relation to pastoralism in drylands, high-altitude mountains, and islands. ​
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As a post-doctoral researcher for REPAiR - I am helping develop arts-based methods to bring together pastoralists, development practitioners, community-based researchers, film-makers, political ecologists/economists and environmental scientists to better narrate the onset of "nature-based solutions" in Southern Africa's communally governed rangelands.​​
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I am involved in several side-projects including coordinating the pastoralism and carbon working group as part of the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralism, running an itinerant film-club that focuses on pastoralism across the globe, and instituting a female collective of researchers-activists-practitioners working with livestock and pastoralists.
I am originally from Italy though I grew up in different countries in the Middle East and North Africa, and have a strong academic imprinting from the UK/US. I hold a BSc in Economics from Nottingham University, a Masters in International Affairs (Energy and Environment/Applied Sciences) from Columbia University, a PhD at the Institute of Development Studies - IDS (Sussex University) and I am currently a post-doctoral researcher at IDS.