I joined the department in 2020 having completed my PhD student at at King’s College London. My PhD research, supervised by Alex Loftus, discussed the ideas of a small group of biologists (mostly active in the 1970s and 80s) who were explicitly influenced by Marxist philosophy. I brought their work into conversation with some key debates among geographers around how nature-society relations might be understood today. I argued that dialectical biology offers an approach to the agency of non-human organisms that is often overlooked in these debates. Dialectical thinkers are focused on how living things transform their environments but without simply stating that everything is an “agent” as some theorists tend to conclude.

I have authored a short biography of Friedrich Engels and have contributed to discussions on the relevance of Engels to geography today, especially environmental geography. I have contributed to conferences, workshops and publications on Marxism and ecology for both academic and non-academic audiences.  

I am also interested in nature and mental health and have begun researching the phenomenon of ecotherapy, where activities such as gardening are offered as a solution to mental health problems. This builds on my experience of teaching and research with colleagues in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s.

Camilla's publications include:

• “Migration in an era of climate breakdown”, International Socialism (2021).
• “Engels and Geography” (edited special issue), Human Geography (2021).
• “Ecological Marxism”, In: Alex Callinicos, Lucia Pradella and Stathis Kouvelakis (eds), Handbook of Marxism and Post-Marxism (Routledge, 2021).
• “Engels as an Ecologist”, In: Terrell Carver and Kohei Saito (eds), Engels in the 21st Century: Re-examination from a Critical Perspective (Palgrave,  2020).

View Camilla's CV.