Dr Victoria Maguire-Rajpaul

Victoria is a political ecologist with a particular focus on smallholder farmers’ perspectives in agro-commodity production.
Many of the 21^st century’s greatest challenges are related to climate change, food security, environmental degradation, and biodiversity loss. Victoria’s research tackles these challenges simultaneously. Her research expertise is with smallholder farmers of cocoa, coffee, oil palm, and cattle and how their livelihoods can be sustained and their multiple dimensions of poverty alleviated in ways that also arrest forest loss and regenerate landscapes for ecosystems to thrive.
She examines zero-deforestation governance and sustainability sourcing within global agricultural value chains. I place special emphasis tropical agricultural commodities such as cocoa, coffee, oil palm, and beef.
She is also active in climate justice, decolonising, feminist, and degrowth networks.

Email: [email protected]

https://x.com/Pol_EcolRajpaul

Background

Victoria joined ARU as a Research Fellow in 2022 from the University of Warwick. At Warwick, Cambridge, and ARU, she conducted research on the social, economic, and psychological impacts of protected areas across Europe and at a sea-level-rise-threatened Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty on the Suffolk coast. With FIDELIO (Forecasting Social Impacts of Biodiversity Conservation Policies in Europe), she gathered data on the social, economic, and well-being impacts that protected area designation has on people living near to Cairngorms National Park, Kullaberg Nature Reserve, and Söderåsen National Park.

Victoria’s agro-commodity research has been primarily concerned with the impacts that zero deforestation commitments, global forest conservation, and sustainable agriculture initiatives have on the smallholders who farm cocoa, coffee, oil palm, and cattle. She has an extensive publication record on the livelihood and poverty impacts that transnational sustainability governance has on the smallholders who farm forest-risk commodities in tropical forests and savannah landscapes.

She has studied and conducted environmental sociology research at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London School of Economics, Warwick, Anglia Ruskin, Trento, Northumbria, and Trinity College Dublin.

Spoken Languages

Fluent French

Competent Spanish, Swedish, and Italian

Basic Portuguese and Afrikaans

Research interests

My research examines the impacts that sustainability governance of agro-commodity supply chains have on smallholder farmers.

How conservation and sustainable sourcing policies impact farmers’ livelihoods and the environment, and the extent to which the impacts are environmentally effective, socially equitable, inclusive, and legitimate.

Teaching

Victoria led the Ruskin Module in Climate Justice and Social Equality. She also lectures on the following ARU degrees:

MSc Sustainability

MA International Relations

MSc Applied Wildlife Conservation

BSc Ecology and Conservation

BSc Zoology

Qualifications

PhD/DPhil Geography & the Environment, University of Oxford

MPhil Environmental Change & Management, University of Oxford (Distinction)

MA Economic Sociology, Trinity College Dublin (First Class)

Diploma HE Economics, University of Northumbria

Memberships, editorial boards

Member, Research and Innovation Committee

Formerly AAG & RGS