Contribution short abstract

This contribution offers a reflexive account of how a Malagasy woman scientist’s identity, privilege, and positionality shape her practice of Political Ecology within North–South research collaborations.

Contribution long abstract

Political Ecology has long interrogated power, knowledge, and the uneven geographies of environmental governance, yet researchers remain deeply embedded in the very colonial structures we critique. Drawing from my trajectory as a Malagasy scholar working in a North-South setting for more than a decade, this contribution offers a reflexive exploration of how my identity, privilege, and positionality shape my practice of Political Ecology. I examine how my location, culturally, institutionally, and geopolitically, conditions the research questions, concepts, methodologies, and collaborations I am able to pursue, the territories to which I gain (or am denied) access, and the expectations that accompany my presence in both Global South struggles and Global North research systems.

Grounded in reflexive methodology, I discuss the tensions that arise when attempting to enact decolonial values in practice: negotiating power asymmetries within North-South research collaborations, confronting the limits of participatory ideals when structural inequalities and historical justice persist, and navigating institutional demands for evidence-based outputs. These experiences illustrate the political work that positionality performs, not as a static declaration, but as an ongoing negotiation that shapes relationships, concepts and methodologies, and the ethics of knowledge production.

I argue for a framework of positionality that is embodied, situated, and transformative. One that moves beyond methodological self-reflection toward concrete practices of accountability, reciprocity, and epistemic pluralism. Such an approach, I suggest, can help repoliticize Political Ecology and support more just knowledge production and relational research collaborations, particularly in contexts where local and Indigenous governance are central to environmental futures.