Dr. Anna Zalik

Dr. Anna Zalik is Associate Professor in Environmental & Urban Change at York University where she teaches in the areas of global environmental politics and critical development studies. Her research, in conjunction with colleagues and community organizations, examines and critiques the political ecology and political economy of industrial extraction, with a focus on the merging of corporate security practices and social welfare interventions in strategic exporters, particularly Canada, Mexico and Nigeria. Zalik has given many presentations internationally and has received various research grants to study the political economy of hydrocarbons, industrial transparency, and the regulation of extractive industries in oceans beyond national jurisdiction. Informed by this work and critiques of imperialism, her current research centers on Canadian investment in the denationalization of the Mexican energy sector, hydrocarbon politics under the TMEC/CUSMA agreement (NAFTA 2.0), and the geopolitics of deep-sea mining in international seabed, designated the ‘Common Heritage of (Hu)mankind’ under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). She is a member of the Expert Working Group of the Bayelsa Commission a body whose mandate is to investigate the socio-ecological caused by multinational oil companies in Bayelsa State, Nigeria.