Carmen Corea-Sánchez

Research Topic: Land-based responses to (Neo-)Extractivism under Authoritarian Regimes. The case of Nicaragua

Country: Nicaragua

Columbia Global Center: Santiago

Carmen Corea-Sánchez (pseudonym) is a Nicaraguan architect, spatial planner, and researcher specializing in land governance, (neo-)extractivism, rural development, and socio-environmental justice. She is a PhD candidate in Engineering Sciences at KU Leuven’s Department of Architecture. Her doctoral research examines the transformative potential of socially innovative land-based practices in rural territories under authoritarian regimes. Specifically, her research focuses on how grassroots land-related initiatives respond to agribusiness expansion, land concentration, deforestation, and extractive pressures in rural Nicaragua. It analyzes how marginalized rural and Indigenous actors – particularly women and youth – develop alternative institutional arrangements to access, govern, and defend land. Through a socio-institutional lens, her work bridges Development Studies, Human Geography, Political Ecology, and Spatial Planning, combining spatial data analysis with participatory action research and critical ethnographic approaches.

Carmen holds an MSc in Human Settlements from KU Leuven, completed magna cum laude with a VLIR-UOS scholarship, and a degree in Architecture from the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in Nicaragua, completed summa cum laude. She has worked as a researcher and lecturer at UCA, regional representative for the Latin American Network of the Land Matrix Global Observatory, and Guest Professor under the “Central American Campus for Academic Freedom” at the University of Costa Rica. Across these roles, she has researched land governance, natural resources, extractivism, and territorial dynamics, while coordinating international research.

Her trajectory is grounded in long-term collaboration with feminist, campesino, Indigenous, and Afrodescendant organizations in Nicaragua and Central America. She has served as Program Manager and Statistical Specialist at the Indigenous human rights association Wangki, where she coordinated monitoring initiatives with the Observatory of Indigenous and Afrodescendant Peoples in Nicaragua’s Caribbean Region; and supports evidence-based advocacy with civil society and Indigenous networks.

At the Columbia Global Center in Santiago, Carmen will consolidate her doctoral dissertation and develop peer-reviewed and policy-oriented outputs on land governance and extractivism under conditions of political constraint. Her research project will focus on how rural and Indigenous actors build socially innovative responses to resource concentration and expanding extractive frontiers, with particular attention to gendered and generational inequalities. This work aims to strengthen critical scholarship on land, territory, and socio-environmental justice while supporting knowledge production in contexts where academic freedom and civic space are increasingly restricted.

Selected Publications (authored under pseudonym due to security and research-context constraints):

Corea-Sánchez, Carmen (2024). La fiebre del oro continúa en Nicaragua: Analizando el período 2022-2024. Land Matrix América Latina.

Corea-Sánchez, Carmen (2024). El extractivismo entre el pasado y el presente. La lucha de los pueblos Mamayangnas por la defensa de sus territorios en Nicaragua. International Land Coalition.

Corea-Sánchez, Carmen (2023). Cuando Costa Rica “no es tan verde”: Ilustrando contextos y mecanismos favorables al (neo)extractivismo en un Refugio de Vida Silvestre. In: El acaparamiento se renueva de energías verdes y otros extractivismos : dossier Nº 5 202. Land Matrix América Latina.