Research areas

Marie Ladekjær Gravesen's overall work pertains to natural resource managenemt in the Global South. Land that holds overlapping, potential, or historical usage by a variety of different actors such as government administrators, politicians, investors in green energy installations, biodiversity conservation actors, security actors, pastoralists, large-scale farm or ranchowners, and subsistance farmers. Specifically, Marie is interested in arenas where political visions, resource needs and land-use regimes clash in practice, creating conflicts around boundaries and fences, support or push-back to political reform and policy implementation, adaptation to change ie. with new pastoral frontiers, and considerations of how overlapping resource claims can become politicized, lead to marginalisation and escalate into open conflict. She works with climate change adaptation, including dynamics around climate adaptation finance, Nature-based Solutions (NbS), and challenges around maladaptation and resources conflicts (legal, physical as well as underlying tensions).

Marie Ladekjær Gravesen's work is empirically grounded while employing methodologies from qualitative anthropological inquiries, to archival usage and geographical information systems etc.. In general, she has been driven by a curiosity of how the micro scale of experiences, such as an exchange, transaction or clash, may be related to the macro scale of global green agendas, state policies, political interference, alliances, competition, or a perceived history of marginalization.

Projects

Marie Ladekjær Gravesen has been engaged in collaborative scholarly projects in a number of contexts from East to West Africa.

At DIIS, Marie is currently the co-PI on the research programme FRONTLANDS (Green Conflicts in Kenya’s NorthernDrylands). FRONTLANDS examines how the Kenyan state, along with NGOs and private actors, are accelerating their presence and interest in the northern pastoral drylands through conservation and green energy interventions, analyzing how the global agenda that these initiatives represent materializes and ignites different layers of conflict. FRONTLANDS is built around a collaboration between DIIS and Kenyatta University.

She also works on the research programme JUCAN (Governing Nature-based Climate Solutions: Prospects for a just green transition in Kenya). JUCAN partners with Nairobi University to explore climate justice aspects related to carbon credit schemes in community conservancies in Kenya. Marie specifically looks at how dynamics play out in relation to Kenya's northern rangelands and the community conservancies engaged in carbon credit projects through the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT)

She is finalyzing work on the research programme 'Governing Adaptation Finance for Transformation' (GAP), focusing on the political economy of funds that are channelled into climate change adaptation in Kenya and Tanzania - inquiring into which institutions are involved and who makes decisions on the route of the funds from macro levels to local (sub-)county implementation levels in Turkana and Makueni counties.

She has recently worked in the programme "Governing Climate Mobility" focusing on local contexts in Ghana and Ethiopia, and a range of studies for the Danish Ministry of Foreign affairs on the integration of climate change adaptation and development.

She has previously collaborated with colleagues at Aarhus University, to undertake studies into rapid as well as long-term changes in fencing practices in Maasai Mara and Laikipia in Kenya.

Her doctorate work looked at the politics of land conflicts in Kenya’s Laikipia County. The work explored the background for the 2016-17 pre-election violence and land invasions in the area - including their legal nature, narratives of resistance and division, political incitement and outright violent attacks. This work has culminated into several academic publications, including her monograph ‘The Contested Lands of Laikipia - Histories of Claims and Conflict in a Kenyan Landscape’, published in November 2020. 

She undertook her doctoral work at Cologne University under the Marie Curie research programme ‘Resilience in East African Landscapes’ (REAL), funded by the European Commission. She has been a visiting researcher at the Department of Human Geography at Stockholm University, the Centre of African Studies at Copenhagen University, the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies at Aarhus University, and had numerous shorter research stays to carry out archival work in Oxford and London.