Professor Rosaleen Duffy
BA, MA, PhD
School of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations
Professor of International Politics
PI of the Multispecies Mutualisms project
Convenor of the Environmental Politics Research Group
Full contact details
School of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations
Elmfield Building
Northumberland Road
Sheffield
S10 2TU
- Profile
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Rosaleen Duffy joined the department in September 2016, having previously held posts at SOAS University of London, University of Manchester and University of Lancaster.
Rosaleen uses a political ecology lens in order to understand global environmental change. She is particularly interested in the global politics of biodiversity conservation, and focuses on global environmental governance, wildlife trafficking, poaching, transfrontier conservation and tourism. Recently, her work has sought to understand the growing links between global security and biodiversity conservation. She has led several large funded research projects, including European Research Council Advanced Investigator Grant for BIOSEC - Biodiversity and Security: Understanding environmental crime, illegal wildlife trade and threat finance, and the ESRC funded Beastly Business project, which examined green crime, political ecology and illegal wildlife trade in European species. She is currently the PI of the Multispecies Mutualisms project, funded by a Wellcome Trust Discovery Award 2025-2030.
- Research interests
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My main research interests are focused on animal politics. I use approaches from political ecology to examine global environmental governance, human-animal relations, biodiversity conservation, transfrontier conservation, wildlife trafficking, poaching and security. Under the Multispecies Mutualisms project I focus primarily on political ecologies of bird conservation and health.
- Publications
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Journal articles
- A harms-based political ecology: understanding harms through the wildlife trade. Journal of Political Ecology, 32(1). View this article in WRRO
- Coexistence beyond disciplinary silos: Five dimensions of analysis for more convivial human-predator interactions. Biological Conservation, 308. View this article in WRRO
- Book review: Revenant ecologies: Defying the violence of extinction and conservation. Environment and Security. View this article in WRRO
- International relations and the non-human: exploring animal culture for global environmental governance. Review of International Studies. View this article in WRRO
- Harms and the illegal wildlife trade: political ecology, green criminology and the European eel. Critical Criminology, 32(1), 61-76. View this article in WRRO
- ReAnimate: Political ecologies of animals in European wildlife conservation. Society and Animals. View this article in WRRO
Book chapters
- The integration of conservation and security: Political ecologies of violence and the illegal wildlife trade In Sowers J & VanDeveer SD (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Politics (pp. 814-830). Oxford University Press View this article in WRRO
Reports
- Poverty reduction strategies: Phase 1 report View this article in WRRO
- Poverty Reduction Strategies: Phase 2 Report View this article in WRRO
- Illegal Wildlife Trade and Poverty: Information Note View this article in WRRO
- A harms-based political ecology: understanding harms through the wildlife trade. Journal of Political Ecology, 32(1). View this article in WRRO
- Research group
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Convenor of the Environmental Politics Research Group
Member of the Political Ecology Network (POLLEN)
Member of the Sheffield Animal Studies Research Centre
- Grants
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Principal Investigator, Wellcome Trust Discovery Award of £1.6 million, for Multispecies Mutualisms (September 2025-August 2030) Co-Is Professor Alasdair Cochrane, Dr Eva Haifa Giraud and Professor Robert McKay (University of Sheffield).
Principal Investigator, UKRI, ESRC grant of £900,000, for Beastly Business: Examining the illegal trade in Bears, Eels and Songbirds (April 2021- July 2023) Co-I Prof Charlotte Burns (University of Sheffield). The project has 3 post doctoral fellows and a project manager. https://BeastlyBusiness.org @BeastlyProject.
Co-I GCRF UKRI/ Newton Agile Response Fund Grant of £300,000, for COVID-19 and the trade in wildlife: Investigating the implications of the pandemic for wildlife supply chains and wildlife trade livelihoods (August 2020-August 2022). Led by Dr. Brock Bersaglio (University of Birmingham), Dr. Charis Enns (University of Manchester) and Dr Francis Massé (University of Northumbria). https://wildlifetradefutures.com @Wildlife_Trade.
Co-I with Professor Dan Brockington, Global Challenges Research Fund UKRI Post Doctoral Fellowship July 2019-July 2021. Awarded to Dr Elaine Hsiao to research environmental peacebuilding in Central Africa. Value £100,000.
Principal Investigator, ERC Advanced Investigator Grant of EURO 1.8 million, BIOSEC: Biodiversity and Security: understanding environmental crime, illegal wildlife trade and threat finance (01.09.16-31.08.20). The project had two PhD students, 5 Post doctoral fellows and a project manager. https://biosec.group.shef.ac.uk @biosec_erc.
Co-I TS2 NORFACE - Belmont Forum grant of EUR 1.2 million for CON-VIVA: Towards Convivial Conservation: Governing Human-Wildlife Interactions in the Anthropocene (2018-2022) led by Prof Bram Büscher and Dr Rob Fletcher (University of Wageningen) https://conviva-research.com/ @convivconserv .
Co-I with Professor Dan Brockington, Max Bateley Post Doctoral Fellowship in Sustainable Peace, 01.02.17- 31.01.19. Awarded to Dr Esther Marijnen to research environments change and rebel movements in Central Africa. Value: £100,000.
Principal Investigator, Leverhulme Visiting Professorship for Giorgos Kallis 01.04.15-31.03.16 value £84,036.
Principal Investigator, ESRC grant of £94,000 (ESRC reference RES-000-22-2599) Neoliberalising Nature? A Comparative Analysis of Asian and African Elephant Based Ecotourism (Dec 2007-October 2008).
Member, Leverhulme Trust International Collaborative Network grant of £95,000. Transnational Climate Change Governance (Principal Grant Holder, Professor Harriet Bulkeley, Geography Department, Durham University).
Principal Investigator, ESRC grant of £42,000 (ESRC reference RES-000-22-0342) Global Environmental Governance and Local Resistances. Oct. 2003-July 2004.
Principal Investigator, ESRC grant of £39,919 (ESRC reference R000223013) ‘The Geopolitics of Bioregions: Conservation and Erosion of National Boundaries’. (Oct. 1999 to Oct. 2000).
- Teaching activities
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Teaching activities
My teaching practice is very interactive - classes are built around a range of different activities which include group tasks, practical exercises, close reading/critiques of key writings, as well as mini-lectures. The aim is to develop opportunities for thorough reflection on the ways we understand and approach global environmental change - this means we critically analyse commonly accepted terms and practices such as Anthropocene, carbon trading, payments for ecosystem services, resource conflicts and natural capital; using a political ecology lens, we try to uncover the uneven distribution of the negative consequences of global environmental change.
Courses
SPR411 The Political Economy of Global Environmental Change
SPR116 Planet Politics
- Professional activities and memberships
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I have a broad span of impact and engagement activities including communicating my research via a range of methods. For example, during my BIOSEC and Beastly Business projects I developed a number of different ways of communicating research results, including policy briefs, animations and short videos for social media - these are all available on the project websties
My research on illegal wildlife trade meant I tasked by DEFRA to review the projects supported by the £51 million Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund to determine the impact of the fund on poverty in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The reports are publicly available
IWTCF Poverty Reduction Strategies Phase 1 report
IWTCF Poverty Reduction Strategies Phase 2 report
IWTCF Illegal Wildlife Trade and Poverty Information Note
I also wrote a report for the European Parliament on EU Trade Policy and the Wildlife Trade
- Supervision Expertise
- wildlife trade
- political ecology
- biodiversity conservation
- animal studies