Annette LaRocco

Associate Director of the Leon Charney Diplomacy Program
Peace, Justice and Human Rights Initaitive

Dr. Annette A. LaRocco received her PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge in 2016. Her doctoral research was funded by the Cambridge International Trust Scholarship and Trinity College Overseas Bursary. She is a Summa cum Laude graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University, with a double major in Political Science and English and completed her master’s degree in African Studies at the University of Oxford, where she was a Clarendon Scholar. Prior to entering academia she worked in foreign policy research in Washington, D.C, with a focus on human rights issues in African conflict zones. During her doctoral studies, Dr. LaRocco conducted ten months of empirical fieldwork in Botswana, during which time she was affiliated with the University of Botswana’s Department of Political and Administrative Studies. Broadly speaking, her research focuses on state-society relations as they relate to biodiversity conservation in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the North-South interactions incumbent in environmental governance processes. This approach considers biodiversity conservation not as simply a technical, scientific, or apolitical process but as one that is inextricably connected to the political processes of the international system, postcolonial statehood, and citizen-state relations. Dr. LaRocco’s research has been published in The Politics of Nature and Science in Southern Africa and she is currently working on several articles and a book manuscript.