Profile

Latham is interested in political ecology, kinship, phenomenology, and human-environment relations. His Master’s research focused on indigenous land tenure and naming on Aneityum, the southernmost island of the Republic of Vanuatu. Aneityum kinship is cognatic and names are used to designate membership in one’s maternal or paternal social group, and to bestow rights to land. The name that one receives emplaces an actor to a specific place within the island landscape, and bestows rights of stewardship to that place. His dissertation research focuses on a social movement on the island of Aneityum, which has formed in response to land alienation and the loss of indigenous land rights throughout the Vanuatu archipelago. The movement is a revival of indigenous leadership, and island-based subsistence practices.