Dr Brock Bersaglio

• PhD in Human Geography, University of Toronto, 2017
• Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education, University of Birmingham, 2022
• MSc in Rural Planning and Development, University of Guelph, 2012
• Certificate in Environmental Management, University of Guelph, 2012

Brock is a political ecologist whose research occupies the intersection of multiple disciplines, including Critical Development Studies, Environmental Studies, and Geography (animal, cultural, environmental, human, and political). His research is influenced by principles and practices of scholar-activism, meaning it is oriented around a collaborative and politically engaged approach to collective learning and action. 

Brock primarily works in northern Kenya, but he also does research in Zambia (Southern and Western Province) and has previously worked extensively in Tanzania. He retains a general interest in critical, environment-related work across eastern and southern Africa.

Regarding PhD and Postdoctoral supervision, Brock is keen to work with researchers interested in critically understanding relationships between development processes (historical and contemporary) and changing ecologies encompassing humans, animals and plants, microbes, landscapes and landscape features, and spiritualities. This could involve a focus on biodiversity conservation, agrarian and land use change, and/or extraction.

Brock’s recent book, Settler Ecologies: The Enduring Nature of Settler Colonialism in Kenya, was published open access by University of Toronto Press in 2024 and can be downloaded for free or purchased in hard copy here.

PGT, Environment and Sustainable Development (Co-convenor)

UG, Development: The Environmental Challenge (Convenor)

Current areas of interest:

• Conservation alternatives and alternatives to conservation
• Community-based approaches to animal health surveillance
• Ecological imperialism and (post)colonial legacies in biodiversity conservation or environmental management more broadly
• Multispecies justice, with a focus on microbial and microscopic political ecologies

Primarily interested in supervising projects with a focus on eastern or southern African countries, but would be open to those on central, northern, and western African countries with appropriate co-supervision.

Current/past supervised PhD topics:

• More-than-human histories of forest change in Kenya
• Politics and power relations of community-based environmental monitoring in Ghana
• Political ecology of climate resilience among smallholders in Egypt