DIRECTORY LISTING
Biography
Constance L. Smith is a PhD Candidate in Geography at the CUNY Graduate Center. She has a MS in Environmental Policy from The New School, NYC, and a BA in English from the University of Texas Arlington where she also leveled up in environmental science and minored in Brazilian Portuguese. In 2023 she was awarded the joint Mellon and Tishman Center Environmental Fellowship, which allowed her to do fieldwork in Catete, Rio de Janeiro.
Most of her research focuses on land-centered resistance in Brazil, U.S. imperialism as it affects Brazil and other Latin-American and Caribbean countries, and the ties between rural-urban development in Brazil and the Southern U.S. She believes collective land stewardship and reciprocal agroecological practices are key in combatting (neo)colonial mechanisms, both domestically and abroad, that depend on the exploitation land, people, and other non-human beings. Studying geographies of uneven development, political geographies, and Black geographies, among others, allows her to engage in the kind of transdisciplinary ethnographic research she hopes will contribute towards the ever-growing solidarities amongst racialized people across the Americas.