Faculty

Profile

Leonardo E Figueroa Helland (PhD) (he/him/le’e/el) is Chair and Associate Professor of the Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management graduate (MS) at The New School university (Lenapehoking/Manahatta/New York City). He is Associate Director of the Tishman Environment and Design Center where he leads the Indigeneity and Decolonizing Sustainability program. A decolonizing scholar of mestizo (mixed-blood) heritage (Indigenous Mesoamerican and Euro-American), his work underlines the centrality of Indigenous resurgence and revitalization in addressing planetary crises, achieving climate justice and materializing systemic change. He does so by articulating radical Indigenous approaches with other counterhegemonic liberatory perspectives to envision and enact decolonial futures against and beyond imperialist, settler colonial, neocolonial, patriarchal, anthropocentric, capitalist and state-centric orders.  His articles appear, inter alia, in the following journals: the NYU Environmental Law Journal (ELJ); Journal of World Systems Research; Perspectives on Global Development and Technology; Studies in Twentieth & Twenty-First Century Literature; Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies; Journal of Critical Education and Policy Studies (JCEPS); and UNESCO Journal of Higher Education and Society/Educación Superior y Sociedad (ESS). His chapters appear in the following volumes: Social Movements and World-System Transformation; Inhabiting the Earth: Anarchist Political Ecology for Landscapes of Emancipation; Contesting Extinctions: Critical Relationality, Regenerative Futures; and forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Historical Sociology; as well as in Grassroots Resistances, Alternatives and Solutions to the 21st Century Climate and Global Ecological Crises: Voices from the Global South. He has recently edited two special numbers of Perspectives on Global Development and Technology on the theme of "Earth Crisis and the Global Environmental Movement". His current projects include two books. The first one is titled Indigenous Resurgence and Earth Crisis: Decolonizing Pathways to Liberation and Regeneration (book project under contract at Routledge). The second one entitled The Indigenous Shape of Worlds to Come: Decolonial Futures beyond Resistance (book project to be prospectively published by Daraja Press).

RECENT ARTICLES

Figueroa Helland, L. E, and Jerry Harris. 2023. “Introduction to the [First] Special Volume: Earth Crisis and the Global Environmental Movement.” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology. 

Brito-Millan, M., L.E. Figueroa Helland, J. Guzman Morales, E. Harrison, J. Ng, L. Quintanilla, A. Salomón, and b. t. Werner. 2023.  “Beyond Green Colonialism in Global Environmental & Climate Politics: Towards Decolonial Solidarity with Mother Earth’s Revolt.” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology.

Figueroa Helland, L. E. 2022. “Indigenous Pathways beyond the “Anthropocene: Biocultural Climate Justice through Decolonization and Land Rematriation.” NYU Environmental Law Journal (ELJ)-- Special Volume on the 2022 Symposium: Free the Land—Land Tenure and Stewardship Reimagined.

Figueroa Helland, L. E., Cassidy Thomas, and Abigail Perez Aguilera. 2018. “Decolonizing Food Systems: Food Sovereignty, Indigenous Revitalization, and Agroecology as Counter-Hegemonic Movements.” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 17: 173-201.

Figueroa Helland, L. E. and T. Lindgren. 2016. “What Goes Around Comes Around: From the Coloniality of Power to the Crisis of Civilization.” In Journal of World Systems Research 22(2): 430-462; Special Issue on “Coloniality of Power and Hegemonic Shifts in the World-System”, edited by M. Boatca, A. Komlosy, and H. H. Nolte.

Figueroa Helland, L. E., T. Lindgren, and T. Pfaeffle. 2016. “Civilization on a Crash Course? Imperialism, Subimperialism and the Political-Ecological Breaking Point of the Modern/Colonial World-System.” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 15(1-2): 255-289.

RECENT CHAPTERS

Figueroa Helland, L. E. and L. Langner (forthcoming, in progress 2023). “Beyond the “Food System” and Toward Biocultural Webs: Resurgent Subaltern Territories vs. Modern/Colonial Regimes.” This chapter will be included In Emigh, R. and McCourt, D. (eds.) (forthcoming 2023/2024), Oxford Handbook of Comparative Historical Sociology. 

Figueroa Helland, L. E., A. Martinez, Neftalí Reyes Mendez, Angélica Castro Rodríguez, Juan José López Negrete, Mileida Correa, José Gualinga, and Çaca Yvaire. (forthcoming, 2023/2024). “Nourishing Communal Territories of Life: Indigenous and Afro-Indigenous Resurgences beyond Earth Crisis.” In M. Frame, F. Mantz and S. Grant, eds. Grassroots Resistances, Alternatives and Solutions to the 21st Century Climate and Global Ecological Crises: Voices from the Global South. New York: Bloomsbury. 

Figueroa Helland, L.E., Abigail Perez Aguilera, and Felix Mantz, (2021). “Decolonize, ReIndigenize: Planetary Crisis, Biocultural Diversity, Indigenous Resurgence, and Land Rematriation.” In Iñaki Pradanos, Cathy Wagner, Suzanne McCullagh, Ilaria Tabusso Marcyan, Ryan Gunderson, eds. Contesting Extinctions: Decolonial and Regenerative Futures. Rowman & Littlefield. 

Thomas, C. and L. E. Figueroa Helland. 2021. “Agri(Cultural) Resistance: Food Sovereignty and Anarchism in Response to the Sociobiodiversity Crisis.” In M. Acker, M. Locret-Collet, J. Mateer, and S. Springer, eds. Inhabiting the Earth: Anarchist Political Ecology for Landscapes of Emancipation. Rowman & Littlefield.

Figueroa Helland, L. E. and P. Raghu. 2017. “Indigeneity Vs. ‘Civilization’: Indigenous Alternatives to The Planetary Rift In The World-System Ecology”. In J Smith, M. Goodhart, P. Manning, and J. Markoff, eds., Social Movements and World System Transformation. London and New York: Routledge. 

Recent Special Issues/Volume

Figueroa Helland, L. E. and Jerry Harris (2023). Co-editors of the First Special Issue on “Earth Crisis and the Global Environmental Movement” (based on the co-organized conference of the same title (Aug 9-13)), Perspectives on Global Development and Technology.