Vanessa's work is broadly interested in how ontologies of nature inform the production of environmental knowledge, especially knowledge of environmental change. She is interested in the project of reforming environmental law and governance frameworks, by asking how the ontological foundations of environmental law and governance frameworks obstruct good governance.
Vanessa is especially interested in how European ontologies of nature produce international environmental frameworks that are maladapted to alternative (indigenous) land and sea management in postcolonial regions, and the problem of how to decolonise these frameworks.
Current Projects
https://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/early-career-fellowships/adaptation-and-indigenous-labour-colonial-extraction-climate-frontier