Simon Granovsky-Larsen

Contact Info

Research Interests

• Social movements
• Political violence
• Environmental conflict
• Central America; Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama
• Extractive industries
• Green extractivism
• Coporate counter-insurgency
• Critical development studies
• Canadian foreign policy and development assistance

Dr. Simon Granovsky-Larsen is Department Head and Associate Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of Regina. His interdisciplinary research is situated within critical development studies, and explores environmental conflict, social movements, and political violence in Central America. Simon is an Associate Fellow of York University’s Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean, and he collaborates frequently with universities and social movements in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, and Panama.

Simon’s various research projects investigate topics of human rights and transnational networks across the Americas. His research, usually conducted in collaboration with grassroots social movement organizations and through extended fieldwork, explores topics such as environmental conflict; extractivism and the energy transition; human rights abuses by mining companies and other corporate actors; the evolution of paramilitary violence; the role of Canada in hemispheric politics; and irregular migration. Some representative publications are listed below, and more publications can be found through Google Scholar and ORCID.

Simon teaches courses in the International Studies program, with an emphasis on the Development Studies stream. He supervises honours theses and graduate work on a range of topics, including social movements, extractive industries, development policy, Latin American politics, migration, and more.

 

Recent and Representative Publications
 
Granovsky-Larsen, S. (2019). Dealing with peace: The Guatemalan campesino movement and the post-conflict neoliberal state. University of Toronto Press.

Paley, D., & Granovsky-Larsen, S. (Eds.). (2019). Organized violence: Capitalist warfare in Latin America. University of Regina Press.
 
Granovsky-Larsen, S., & Escudero-Nuñez, C. (2024). Capitalismo verde y conflictos  comunitarios en el Parque Eólico Toabré. Revista Tareas, 178, 23-31.
 
Granovsky-Larsen, S., & Larreátegui Benavides, P. (2023). Environmental conflict and the expansion of renewable energy in Central America: Exploring Canadian participation. Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 47(2), 192-214.
 
Granovsky-Larsen, S. (2022). Institutionalized terror: Paramilitaries and the Guatemalan state. In J. Hristov, J. Sprague, & A. Tauss (Eds), The political violence of capital: Paramilitary formations in global perspective (pp. 71-87). Routledge.

Granovsky-Larsen, S., & Santos, L. (2021). From the war on terror to a war on territory: Corporate counterinsurgency at the Escobal mine and the Dakota Access Pipeline. Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 46(1), 121-145.
 
Granovsky-Larsen, S. (2019). Tierra y la reconfiguración del poder en la Guatemala posconflicto. In C. Pastor (Ed.), Concentración económica y poder político en América Latina (pp. 249-276). Buenos Aires: CLACSO.
 
Granovsky-Larsen, S. (2013). Between the bullet and the bank: Agrarian conflict and access to land in neoliberal Guatemala. Journal of Peasant Studies, 40(2), 325-350.