I am an Assistant Professor of Environmental Social Science at the University of Montana.

My research, teaching and public scholarship investigate environment, development and technology with a focus on social justice in the Global South. I am currently working on a book project tentatively titled, ‘Surviving the State: Struggles for Land and Democracy in Myanmar,’ that provides an intimate ethnography of how farmers, activists and officials negotiated a decade of military-liberal democracy in Myanmar. In it, I argue that land is central to surviving the state and making meaningful life in the cracks and fissures of authoritarian rule. My second major project argues for taking rural worlds seriously in studies of technology, building on a series of projects that investigate how diverse actors harness analogue and digital tools to reshape relations between people and environments. I lead a research project on small farmers and big tech in Myanmar and co-lead two interdisciplinary research groups: one focused on digital transformations in property and development, the other on the ethics and practices of algorithmic conservation.

I am a former Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkeley, where I was a Data Science Fellow affiliated with the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society, the Center for Southeast Asia Studies and the Land Lab. I earned my PhD from Cornell University’s Department of Development Sociology (now Global Development) in 2020, where I was an active member of the Southeast Asia Program. From 2022-23 I was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow in the Department of Food and Resource Economics at the University of Copenhagen. (I’ll be back in Copenhagen in spring/summer 2024).

I hold a Masters of Environmental Management and B.A. with honors in Environmental Studies from Yale University. Before graduate school, I worked with women’s and land rights activists in Myanmar, environmental conservationists in Bhutan, and on global forest governance at the World Resources Institute in Washington, DC. Collaborations with activists, artists and policy-makers continue to inspire and enrich my scholarship. In the wake of Myanmar’s military coup, I am honored to serve on the Interim Steering Committee of the Virtual Federal University and the Board of Directors of the Gender Equality Network.

Support for my work includes grants from the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the European Research Council, the Luce Foundation and Facebook Research.

Download my CV or contact me at hilary.faxon [at] umontana.edu.