Maria Juliana Rubiano-Lizarazo

Juliana Rubiano Lizarazo is a second-year Ph.D. student in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She has a BA in Anthropology and an MS in Applied Economics from Universidad de los Andes (Colombia). Juliana is interested in the intersection between development, environmental governance, illicit economies, and armed conflict. For her PhD, she is working under a NASA-funded project to analyze socio-political drivers of land use change and land use conflicts in Colombia and their implications for peacebuilding. She is also interested in the environmental and socioeconomic effects of organized crime activities in the Global South. Past research involved local resource sharing and collective action dilemmas, socio-ecological impacts of the expansion of illicit economies, and coca crop substitution programs in protected areas and collective territories.