October 2023 - March 2024
Representation of Professor Michael Bollig, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne.

Since 2022
Postdoctoral researcher, ERC-funded project “Rewilding the Anthropocene”, University of Cologne.

2018-2021
PhD (Magna cum laude), Anthropology, University of Cologne: “Living and becoming with the forest: conservation politics in a human-sylvan assemblage in Baringo highlands, Kenya” – Part of the CRC 228 “Future Rural Africa”(https://crc-trr228.de/)”

2017-2018
Master “Comparative study of development “, School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS, Paris).

2014 - 2017
Dual Master “Environmental Science and Policy”, Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC), Sciences Po Paris.

2011 - 2014
Dual Bachelor programm « Social and Natural Sciences », Université Pierre et Marie Curie and Sciences Po Paris.

• Political ecology
• More-than-human anthropology
• Human-environment relations
• Forest and wildlife conservation
• Local ecological knowledge and governance
• Environmental politics
• Kenya, Zambia

The project “Rewilding the Anthropocene” focuses on social-ecological changes and transforming multispecies relations in the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area in Southern/Central Africa, one the world’s largest transboundary conservation zone. Focusing on six multispecies assemblages (centered around different species: elephant, lion, tsetse fly, rosewood tree, foot-and-mouth disease, cattle), the project interrogates the transformations of local livelihoods, institutions and knowledge, shaped by conservation initiatives. In this project, Léa Lacan focuses on the assemblage involving the tsetse fly and the trypanosomiasis disease, exploring the historical links between tsetse control and conservation in Zambia. She also conducts research on current local conservation projects in southwestern Zambia, where she examines changing human-wildlife relations and the politics of rewilding initiatives at the crossroads of political ecology and more-than-human anthropology.

This project is funded by the European Research Council: www.rewilding.de

Forests around the world crystallize often competing issues of nature conservation, climate change adaptation and mitigation, production of economic assets and questions of environmental justice. While deforestation in Kenya is framed as an important concern, forests in the country are also involved in political struggles, including local claims on land. This research focuses on forest conservation in such a contested background, in the context of a small governmental forest, the Katimok Forest, located in the Baringo highlands. With an ethnographic and historical approach drawing on environmental history, political ecology and more-than-human anthropology, the project is concerned with the complex local human-forest interactions – material, social and political – that underpin, shape and inform questions of environmental justice and forest management.

This project was a PhD research within the Collaborative Research Center 228 “Future Rural Africa” (https://crc-trr228.de/), funded by the German Research Foundation.