Political Ecology, Science and Technology Studies, Indigenous Knowledge, Nature-Society Relations
Dr. Goldman’s research is situated in human-environment geography and can best be described as political ecology with specific attention to knowledge politics as related to conservation and development interventions. She draws on a combined feminist political ecology and science studies perspectives. Specific research projects focus on the following overlapping areas: the politics of wildlife conservation (knowledge and practice); the politics of participation and knowledge regarding rangeland management, conservation practice, and development; changing resource governance, knowledge, and ecologies in pastoral communities as related to climate change and institutional changes in semi-arid rangelands; and the gendered dynamics of resource access and use. She has worked for over two decades in East Africa, specifically with pastoral/agro-pastoral Maasai communities in Tanzania and Kenya and has recently begun to expand her research to include comparative work with forest-dwelling tribal communities in India. Her book, Narrating Nature: Wildlife conservation and Maasai ways of knowing, was published by the University Arizona Press, Critical Green Engagements Series in 2020. She is also co-editor (with P. Nadasdy, and M.D. Turner), of Knowing nature: Conversations at the intersection of political ecology and science studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011, and has also published widely in Geography and conservation and development journals.
Current projects include a large-scale collaborative research project with scholars and co-researchers across Europe, Asia, and Africa on the effects of Covid-19 on dryland communities broadly, and on community conservation efforts in particular. She is also looking at what it means to decolonize conservation in different places around the world, from East Africa to Asia, Canada and the US.