Mission
We conduct research on how people live with, understand, care for, and transform more-than-human worlds.
Our work brings together political ecology, geography, science and technology studies, and environmental justice to examine relationships among people, plants, soils, microbes, landscapes, and environmental change.
Much of the research involves Indigenous community partners and/or undergraduate researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Platteville.
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Ayahuasca and the Cosmopolitics of Healing
My first book, Ayahuasca and the Cosmopolitics of Healing: Interspecies Entwinements in the Peruvian Amazon, examines the relations, practices, and economies surrounding ayahuasca in Ucayali, Peru.
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Extractive Worlds
How histories of extraction continue to shape forests, economies, inequalities, and environmental relations in the Peruvian Amazon.
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Soil Relations & Agricultural Practices
Collaborative research on how farmers, soils, microbes, and agricultural practices shape one another in Wisconsin.
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Farmacia Viva: Community-Based Conservation
A Shipibo-led medicinal forest conservation project in Paoyhan, Peru, supporting plant-based healing, local stewardship, and community control over land and medicinal knowledge.
About the Research Group
The Land Practices Lab is based in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Society at the University of Wisconsin–Platteville.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the students, farmers, community members, collaborators, and organizations who contribute their time, knowledge, and care to this work.
land Acknowledgement
The University of Wisconsin–Platteville occupies the ancestral territories of several Indigenous nations, including the Ho-Chunk, Sauk and Meskwaki, Myaamia, Kickapoo, Potawotami, and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ. UW–Platteville continues to benefit from its occupation of Indigenous land, and as members of the University, we also benefit from these ongoing colonial structures and processes.
The Land Practices Lab seeks to make these histories and structures visible and to examine how they continue to shape inequalities and relationships with land.
Latest updates
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New article by Tracey Osborne, Sylvia Cifuentes, Laura Dev, Seánna Howard, Elisa Marchi, Lauren Withey, and Marcelo Santos Rocha da… Read more.
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Land practices lab student Ellie Zimmermann was featured in the UW-Platteville news for her environmental justice research project that was… Read more.
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About
Laura Dev, PhD
Assistant Professor | Environmental Sciences & Society | University of Wisconsin–Platteville
I am an environmental social scientist whose research and teaching focus on land, justice, conservation, and changing human-environment relations. Using political ecology and multispecies ethnography, I study plant-human relations, land practices, and more-than-human collaborations, with particular attention to forests, conservation, and political economy.
Undergraduate Researchers 2026
Agricultural Practices and Soil Relations in the Midwest
Emily Boldt
Jill Frye
Natalie Moore
Brady Radtke
Jacob Thomas
Matthew Zidarich
Undergraduate Researchers 2025
Land Practices and Soil Relations in the Midwest
Lindsey Barnes
Allison Bean
Olivia Burke
Leia Feldermann
Grace Unmacht
Undergraduate Researchers 2024
Land Practices in the Midwest
Beau Brackemeyer
Sam Harding
Kayley Latham
Undergraduate Researchers 2023
Land Practices in the Midwest
Danielle Hagen
John Rodwell
Colin Whitney
Liv Severson
Patty Wrobel
Undergraduate Researchers 2022
How participating in land practices impacts students connection with the land
Mackenzie Murphy
Aalyah Sahraoui
Ellie Zimmermann
