Lior Hamovitz

I am a Political Science PhD candidate (ABD) at Boston University and CSSN Scholar, specializing in political theory. My interests are in the field of environmental justice, with research centering on understanding environmental injustices through the lenses of kinship and loss. In my work, I aim to contribute to academic scholarship, the practice of justice-making in global climate discourses, and the advancement of Environmental Justice as an autonamous discipline of research and action. 

My doctoral dissertation explores how relational ontologies such as the vast Andean cosmovision may inform a more profound view of kinship with nature that could transform our ability to grieve ecological losses and in turn act to mitigate them. Along the theoretical aspects of this work, based in feminist care ethics and Indigenous epistemologies, I conduct fieldwork in Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru, with the aim of immersion in the Rights of Nature (alternatively - Earth Law or Ecological Jurisprudence) movement.

I earned my bachelor’s degree in World Politics from Leiden University’s honors program in The Hague and my master’s degrees in Political Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and from Boston University. During my graduate studies, I have trained in a variety of methodological approaches to grounding normative claims regarding the pursuit of climate justice. My research agenda engages with the compounding effects of geography, history and identity on people’s lived experience of environmental injustices.