Donald Kingsbury

Donald Kingsbury is an Assistant Professor (teaching stream) in Political Science and Latin American Studies and the Acting Director of the Munk One Program at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Don’s research focuses on the politics of resource extraction, energy transitions, and political ecology in our warming world. He has conducted extensive fieldwork throughout Latin America – and more recently, Canada – while building a teaching portfolio that has included, for example, field study with students in the Ecuadorean Amazon on the relationship between petroleum-based development models, democracy, and environmental conservation. Don’s current project focuses on the emerging extractive frontier in lithium and other minerals necessary for decarbonizing technologies, and the ways in which ‘mining for the climate’ departs from and follows familiar and unequal global divisions of risk, affluence, power, and nature. In addition to his academic work, Don is a frequent commentator on Latin American politics in local, national, and international media and has served as an advisor to the government of Canada.

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