Penelope Anthias

Associate Professor, Department of Geography 

Penelope Anthias is Associate Professor in Human Geography at Durham University. She has been conducting research on Indigenous territorial claims and hydrocarbon conflicts in the Chaco region of Bolivia since 2008. Her monograph Limits to Decolonization: Indigeneity, Territory, and Hydrocarbon Politics in the Bolivian Chaco (Cornell University Press, 2018) won the American Political Science Association Best Book Award in the field of Race, Ethnicity and Politics. Other publications include two co-edited books and three special issues that convene debates around ethnic territorial recognition, neoextractivism and territorial conflicts, and nature and anti-coloniality. Penelope has directed and produced two documentaries with rural communities impacted by hydrocarbon development in Southeast Bolivia: Don’t Touch Tariquía: The Resistance of Chiquiacá (2022) and Urukurenda: In Search of the Land Without Evil (Ĩvĩ Maraëï) (2025). She is currently working on a book manuscript examining the spatial politics of natural gas development and community resistance in the Tariquía National Reserve of Flora and Fauna.

Read more about Penelope and her work here.