The Geographer That Latin America Made Me

The chapter discusses the familial, social, and academic factors that led to a career in Latin American geography. Tracing a personal trajectory from an undergraduate programme of anthropology and geography, through to doctoral fieldwork in the southern Peruvian Andes, the chapter describes the conceptual, methodological, and theoretical foundations for subsequent teaching and knowledge production. The chapter elaborates on the processes by which critical geographies began to encompass Latin American debates, thereby transforming in turn Anglophone substantive and theoretical concerns. Latin American insights include frameworks for understanding contemporary coloniality and modernity, a framework that both inspired efforts to engage decolonizing debates in the United Kingdom and deepened a commitment to collaborative and Indigenous-led data-generating and interpretive practices. The chapter contextualizes critical analyses of postcolonial intersectional exclusions of gender and racism, involving Indigenous women and communities.