Zhe Yu Lee is a second-year MS student in the Department of Geography. His master’s research looks at the current politics of implementation around forest and land tenure policies in Indonesian province of North Sumatra, especially as it relates to the (un)changing nature of the forest and environment bureaucracies of the Indonesian state.
He has broader longer-term interests in historicizing the dominance of technocratic approaches in contemporary global environmental governance. In part, this entails exploring the relationship between the scientization of knowledges with regard to tropical agriculture, tropical forests and “the economy” during the early Cold War and Third World visions of nation-building and international order.
His primary theoretical interests include science and technology studies, political ecology, global environmental history, critical policy studies, critical international relations and critical development studies. He received his BA from Macalester College in 2015 with majors in geography and environmental studies.