Senior Lecturer, Sociology
Alice Beban is a co-director of the Massey University Political Ecology Research Centre. Alice co-organised PERC’s ‘Extraction’ and ‘Emotional Political Ecology’ conferences.
She holds a PhD in Development Sociology from Cornell University in the United States.
Her research addresses land rights, agricultural production, and gender concerns to understand people’s changing relationships with land and water from a feminist political ecology perspective.
Recent projects include research on ‘land grabs’ and redistributive land reform in Cambodia, cross-border migration of smallholder farmers in the Mekong Delta, gendered agrarian transformation and the right to food, and mapping cultural change in dam-affected communities along the Mekong river.
Her new book, Unwritten Rule (Cornell Press, 2021) examines land politics as a lens through which to understand the larger nature of democracy in Cambodia.
Selected publications
- Chann, S., Beban, A., Flaim, A., Gorman, T., & Vouch, LL. (2024). Disorientations: The Political Ecology of “Displacing” Floating Communities from Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake. Antipode. 56(5), 1535-1559
- Beban, A., & Bourke Martignoni, J. (2024). The lucky and unlucky daughter: Gender, land inheritance and agrarian change in Ratanakiri, Cambodia. Journal of Agrarian Change. 24(2)
- Ehrensperger, A., Nanhthavong, V., Beban, A., et al (2024). The agrarian transition in the Mekong Region: pathways towards sustainable land systems. Journal of Land Use Science. 19(1), 1-23
- Beban, A. (2025). Entrepreneurial Women in a Saturated Marketplace: How Gendered Power Shapes Experiences of Debt in Rural Cambodia. Journal of Contemporary Asia. 55(1), 28-49
- Hett, C., Aye, ZC., Gironde, C., Beban, A. et al (2023). Agroecological initiatives in the Mekong Region: a systematic literature review and mapping reveals their implications for transitioning to sustainable food systems. Journal of Land Use Science. 18(1), 334-355
- Aston, S., Beban, A., & Walters, V. (2023). Policing freedom campers: the place, class, and xenophobic dynamics of overtourism in Aotearoa New Zealand. Tourism Geographies. 25(6), 1534-1554
- Beban, A., & Banks, G. (2023). Institutions, governance and extractives: Where politics and ecologies collide. Extractive Industries and Society. 15
- Diepart, JC., Scurrah, N., Beban, A., Gironde, C., & Campbell, NY. (2023). The recognition and formalization of customary tenure in the forest landscapes of the Mekong region: a Polanyian perspective. Journal of Land Use Science. 18(1), 211-226
- Beban, A., & Gironde, C. (2023). Surviving cassava: smallholder farmer strategies for coping with market volatility in Cambodia. Journal of Land Use Science. 18(1), 109-127
- Nguyen, AT., Oya, C., Beban, A., Gironde, C., Cole, R., & Ehrensperger, A. (2023). Agricultural commercialization in the Mekong region: A meta-narrative review and policy implications. Journal of Land Use Science. 18(1), 128-151
- Beban, A., & Bourke Martignoni, J. (2021). “Now the Forest Is Over”: Transforming the Commons and Remaking Gender in Cambodia’s Uplands. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. 5
- Schoenberger, L., & Beban, A. (2021). Rupturing violent land imaginaries: finding hope through a land titling campaign in Cambodia. Agriculture and Human Values. 38(1), 301-312
- Beban, A., & Schoenberger, L. (2019). Fieldwork undone: Knowing Cambodia’s land grab through affective encounters. ACME. 18(1), 77-103