Iokiñe Rodriguez

Iokiñe Rodríguez is a Venezuelan sociologist, based at the School of International Development (DEV) from the University of East Anglia, UK, where she works as Senior Lecturer in Environment and Development.

She specializes on local environmental knowledge and conflict transformation in Latin America using participatory action-research. She has worked in Venezuela, Guyana, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia and Colombia building local and institutional capacity to transform environmental conflicts. Her work on environmental conflict transformation focuses on issues of local history, local knowledge, power, environmental justice, equity and intercultural dialogue.  She is committed to making research a tool for social transformation and overcoming power asymmetries, using tools such as participatory videos, talking maps and community authored books, to help empower local communities, revitalise their culture and knowledge and strengthen the self esteem and the sense of dignity. She is co-founder of Grupo Confluencias, a consortium of Latin American conflict practitioners, researchers and institutions actively engaged for more than 10 years developing processes of environmental conflict transformation, and who have been working together since 2005 in the development of a platform for deliberation, joint research, and training in this topic.