Miles Kenney-Lazar

Brief Introduction

I am interested in the changing political ecologies of land and property in the Mekong Region, especially how the capitalization and commodification of land produces unequal agrarian and environmental geographies with significant livelihood ramifications. I have long been captivated by the the possibility of resistance by the rural poor to the dispossession of their lands and their capacity to influence governance processes. Empirically, my research has examined land contestation related to the expansion of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Burmese agro-industrial plantations and special economic zones in Laos and Myanmar. I also maintain broader theoretical interests in the intersections of value and nature under capitalism, the transformation of late socialist political economies, and the relational construction of sovereignty over land and resources. Beyond political ecology, my scholarship contributes to political geography, development geography, agrarian studies, and Southeast Asian area studies.

Academic Positions

• Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore (2018 - )
• Assistant Professor, Hakubi Center for Advanced Research & Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University (2017 - 2018)
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Japan-ASEAN Platform for Transdisciplinary Studies, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University (2017)

Education

• Ph.D., Graduate School of Geography, Clark University (2013 - 2016)
• M.A., Graduate School of Geography, Clark University (2010 - 2012)
• B.A., Department of Geography & Department of International Studies, University of Miami (2005 - 2009)

Selection of latest publications

• Kenney-Lazar, M. and S. Mark. 2021. Variegated Transitions: Emerging Forms of Land and Resource Capitalism in Laos and Myanmar. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 53(2): 296-314.
• Kenney-Lazar, M. 2020. Relations of Sovereignty: The Uneven Production of Transnational Plantation Territories in Laos. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 45(2): 331-344.
• Kenney-Lazar, M. and N. Ishikawa. 2019. Mega-Plantations in Southeast Asia: Landscapes of Displacement. Environment and Society, 10(1): 63-82.
• Kenney-Lazar, M. 2019. Neoliberalizing Authoritarian Environmental Governance in (Post)Socialist Laos. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 109(2): 338-348.