Manuela L. Picq (Image provided)
The annual Kenneth Roemer Lecture on World Affairs at SUNY Geneseo will feature Manuela L. Picq, a professor of international relations at Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador, who will speak on the topic of "Water Defenders: why indigenous peoples, especially women, are at the frontlines of climate solutions."
The April 14 lecture will be hosted online via Zoom at 2:30 p.m. and is open to the public. Register for the lecture online.
In addition to her professor role at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Picq is the Loewenstein Fellow in the Departments of Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies and Political Science at Amherst College in Massachusetts. She has held research positions at Freie Universität Berlin (2015), the Institute for Advanced Study (2013), and the Woodrow Wilson Center (2005). Her approach to international relations focuses on indigenous peoples, nature and extractive politics, and gender and sexuality in Latin America. She is the author of "Vernacular Sovereignties: Indigenous Women Challenging World Politics "(University of Arizona Press 2018), and co-editor of "Sexuality and Translation in World Politics"(with Caroline Cottet, E-IR 2019), Queering Narratives of Modernity (with Maria Amelia Viteri, Peter Lang 2016) and Sexualities in World Politics\(with Markus Thiel, Routledge 2015). She publishes in peer-reviewed journals and international media outlets; she also collaborates with indigenous organizations in Ecuador and Guatemala. Her work at the intersection of scholarship, journalism, and activism led her to be expelled from Ecuador in 2015 and to be nominated among a New Generation of Public Intellectuals in 2018. In 2021, she helped lead a presidential campaign with her partner, Yaku Perez, in Ecuador based on the defense of water.