Thea Riofrancos

Thea Riofrancos (PhD, University of Pennsylvania)is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College, a Strategic Co-Director of the Climate and Community Institute, and a fellow at the Transnational Institute. Her research focuses on conflict over resource extraction in Latin America.

A 2014-15 Kellogg visiting fellow, Riofrancos research focuses on resource extraction, climate change, the energy transition, the global lithium sector, green technologies, social movements, and the Latin American left. These themes are explored in her book, Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020).

Her fieldwork included archival research at the National Assembly in Quito, over 100 interviews with social movement, state, and corporate actors, and extensive participant observation of events such as activist meetings in indigenous communities and mining industry conventions.

Previously, Riofrancos was an Andrew Carnegie Fellow (2020-2023), a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University (2020-2021), a Visiting Researcher at the Nucleo mileno de investigación en energía y sociedad (NUMIES) in Santiago, Chile (2019), a Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame (2014-2015), and held a one-year appointment as a Visiting Researcher at the Facultad de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Quito, Ecuador (2011-2012). I received my Ph.D. in political science at the University of Pennsylvania in 2014, and my B.A. from Reed College in 2006.