Faculty

Profile

Leonardo Figueroa Helland (PhD (he/him/le’e/el) is Director and Associate Professor of the Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management graduate (MS) program, and faculty with the Environmental Studies undergraduate program, and the PhD in Public and Urban Policy. He is Affiliate Faculty Associate Director at the Tishman Environment and Design Center with a focus on Indigeneity, Decolonization, Climate, Environmental, Global and Food Justice.

Dr. Figueroa Helland’s scholarly expertise, approaches, and focus areas reflect a career-long trajectory of cross-disciplinary, critical, and community-engaged work centered on Indigenous and decolonizing approaches to environmental and climate crises; critical and grassroots approaches to global environmental governance, policy, politics, and movements; environmental, climate, social, global, and Earth justice; interdisciplinary complex systems analysis in global studies and Earth system science; critical studies of science, technology, and development; and food sovereignty, agroecology, and just transformations.

His work proceeds from intersectional and interdisciplinary critical approaches that address complex, interconnected systemic challenges by examining root drivers and articulating justice-centered transformative solutions across sectors. This includes work on the nexus of climate, biodiversity, land, forests, food, energy, water, migration, development, economics, securitization, militarization, and geopolitics. Dr. Figueroa Helland articulates decolonizing and Indigenous approaches through a theoretically and methodologically diverse range of critical, emancipatory, and historically subjugated epistemologies, including Indigenous epistemologies, political ecology, political economy, gendered, queer, Two-Spirit, and Global South approaches. He combines these with interdisciplinary complex-systems analyses of Earth system and world-system challenges in order to advance transformative solutions through governance and policy, community and civil society organizing, and frontline movement building.

His recent writings, which reflect this approach, have appeared in the Oxford Handbook of Climate Action, the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Historical Sociology, the NYU Environmental Law Journal, the Journal of World-Systems Research, Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, and Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. His work has also appeared in edited volumes such as Contesting Extinctions: Critical Relationality, Regenerative Futures; Grassroots Resistances, Alternatives and Solutions to the 21st Century Climate and Global Ecological Crises: Voices from the Global South; Inhabiting the Earth: Anarchist Political Ecology for Landscapes of Emancipation; and Social Movements and World-System Transformation. He also edited a special volume on “Earth Crisis and the Global Environmental Movement” for Perspectives on Global Development and Technology. Dr. Figueroa Helland is currently working on a manuscript titled Indigenous Resurgence and Earth Crisis: Decolonizing Pathways to Liberation and Regeneration (forthcoming, under contract with Routledge).

Dr. Figueroa Helland's scholarship is well-recognized. He has presented his work in numerous and diverse contexts (academic, public, social movement, civil society organizing and community contexts), both nationally and internationally. He has been invited keynote speaker, invited public speaker or invited lecturer multiple times, including the Universidad Intercultural de Chiapas, Mexico, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaiso, Chile, Universidad de los Lagos - Chiloe, Universidad de los Lagos - Osorno, the National Farmer’s Union of Canada, the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, Swarthmore College, Hamilton College, University of Miami-Ohio, Utah Valley University, the Global Studies Association-North America, the NYU Law School and NYU Environmental Law Journal Symposium, The New School, Westminster University, at the collective of climate and environmental justice civil society organizations known as Hoodwinked in the Hothouse, EarthJustice law, the Center for Interdisciplinary Environmental Justice, Start:Empowerment, the Friends of the Earth International, Free University of Brighton (UK), the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, the Red de Pueblos Transnacionales (New York), and The Swiss Institute. He has also presented his research at conferences of the Global Studies Association-North America, World Ecology Research Network, Political Economy of the World Systems at the American Sociological Association, Society for the Study of Social Problems, The Great Transitions Conference, Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, the International Studies Association, the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, the American Indian Studies Association, the International Studies Assoc., the Mexican Assoc. of International Studies, among others. 

Dr. Figueroa Helland is committed to community-, public-, and movement-engaged scholarship that is accountable to and led by stakeholders and frontline communities, and that advances systemic change. In his view, timely scholarship in the face of intersecting crises must be coproduced through the convergence of critical interdisciplinary inquiry, rigorous research, and practice-oriented education rooted in the sharing, coproduction, and co-design of knowledge. This approach weaves together scholars and students with communities, the public, civil society, frontline and grassroots constituencies, and environmental, social, climate justice, food justice, and Indigenous movements.

Dr. Figueroa Helland is thus invested in a trajectory of research leadership, public scholarship, and fundraising for community-engaged initiatives. In relation to the Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management MS prgoram, and the Tishman Environment and Design Center, he has led research and public engagement initiatives since 2018 on Indigenous approaches to sustainability, climate and environmental justice, governance, policy, movements, food systems, land rights, and biocultural diversity. He has secured both internal and external funding for research, educational, and public programming, including initiatives in Indigenous studies and Indigenous ecologies. His recent fundraising includes support for collaborative research with Indigenous and Global South scholars and organizations on autonomous territorial governance, land restitution, agroecological food sovereignty, and community-based responses to interconnected crises of climate, biodiversity, food, and displacement.

Public engagement is a central dimension of his work. He has organized and co-led numerous conferences, speaker series, panels, convenings, webinars, and public education initiatives that bring together scholars, students, movement activists, frontline and Indigenous leaders, community organizations, and social and environmental organizations. These include, for example, the conference Earth Crisis and the Global Environmental Movement (2022), an annual Indigenous Speaker Series, and numerous events focused on Indigenous governance, water ethics, Indigenous feminisms, climate justice, and frontline movement leadership. He has also co-hosted and co-organized major movement-centering convenings, including, for instance, a People’s Summit during NYC Climate Week.

Dr. Figueroa Helland’s work is closely connected to communities of practice across climate justice, environmental justice, food sovereignty, and Indigenous movements. He collaborates with broad transnational networks of grassroots organizations, movements, and scholar-activists through initiatives such as Hoodwinked in the Hothouse: Resist Climate False Solutions, where he has helped lead roundtables, webinars, white papers, and popular education projects on climate justice and false solutions. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, supporting work on land rematriation, food sovereignty, regenerative land-based justice, and public curriculum development. In addition, he collaborates with Indigenous and autonomous community networks in Abya Yala/Latin America and serves as a faculty advisor to the Environmental Justice Movement Fellowship at The New School.

Dr. Leonardo Figueroa Helland has extensive teaching, advising, and mentoring experience across undergraduate and graduate education. Over the course of his career, he has designed and taught a wide range of courses in Indigenous and decolonial studies, political ecology, climate and environmental justice, global politics, political theory, development, human rights, and interdisciplinary global studies.In recognition of this trajectory, Dr. Figueroa Helland has received The New School’s university-wide Distinguished Teaching Award (2021–2022). He was also nominated for the same award in 2020–2021, and has been separately nominated twice for the Outstanding Achievements in Social Justice Teaching award (2020–2021, 2025–2026). At The New School, where he has taught since 2018, his courses have included Indigenous Ecologies; Political Ecologies of Resistance; Climate Change: Systemic Crisis/Systemic Change; Global Environmental Politics & Policy; Global Political Ecology; and the Capstone Research Seminar in the M.S. in Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management. Previously, at Westminster College/University (2012–2018), he designed and taught a broad range of courses including Humanitarian Politics and Human Rights; Humanitarian Law; Indigenous Knowledges and Lifeways; Indigenous Political Ecologies; Community Leadership in International Contexts: Guatemala Travel Seminar; Exploring Global Challenges; Global Politics I and II; Advanced Global Studies; Contemporary Political Philosophy; Research Methods; Senior Capstone; Resistance, Revolt & Revolution; Research Seminar in Political Studies; Economic Development and Foreign Policy; Global Welfare and Justice; Explorations in Politics; Introduction to Political Science; Comparative Political Systems; Political Economy of Conflict; and The Global Crises of Civilization. Earlier, at Arizona State University (2008–2012), he taught courses including Contemporary Global Controversies I and II; Comparative Politics and Political Geography; Political Ideologies; and Comparative Government. He has also taught internationally at the Universidad de las Américas, Mexico, where he offered a course on History and Politics of North America.

Professional Affiliation

• Director and Associate Professor of the MS in Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management (EPSM), Parsons School of Design Strategies (formerly in the Milano School of Policy, Management and the Environment, at The New Schools of Public Engagement)
• Associate Faculty Director in the Tishman Environment and Design Research Center (TEDC), specializing in Indigenous & Decolonial Approaches to Climate/Environmental/Food Justice, Governance and Movements 
• Co-Chair of Collaborative Climate Futures
• Faculty in the PhD in Public and Urban Policy, New School for Social Research (formerly in the Milano School of Policy, Management & Environment, at the Schools of Public Engagement)
• Affiliate Faculty of Environmental Studies, Lang College of Liberal Arts
• Affiliate Faculty of the Gender and Sexualities Studies Institute (GSSI)
• Affiliate Faculty of the group on Critical Perspectives on Democratic Anti-Colonialism
• Academic Partner and member of the collaborative Hoodwinked in the Hothouse: Resist Climate False Solutions which includes, inter alia, the civil society and social movement organizations: Indigenous Environmental Network, Indigenous Climate Action, Global Justice Ecology Project, Climate Justice Alliance, Biofuelwatch, Just Transition Alliance, La Via Campesina, ETC Group, Energy Justice Network, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project, Diablo Rising Tide, North American Megadam Resistance Alliance, Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, Rising Tide North America, and Shaping Change Collaborative  
• Board member of the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust (NEFOC-LT)   

Recent Publications

Figueroa Helland, L. E., T. Giacomini, L. Langner,  and T. Kligler (forthcoming 2025/26). “Indigenous Biocultural Territories vs. The Modern/Colonial Food System: Contesting Food Pathways at the “Anthropocene” Threshold.” In R. Emigh. and D. McCourt (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Comparative Historical Sociology. Oxford University Press. 

Fenelon, James V. and Figueroa Helland, L. E. (2025). “Global Indigenous Struggles and Climate Change Activism.” In P. Almeida, ed. Oxford Handbook of Climate Action. Oxford University Press. (est 2025)

Figueroa Helland, L. E., A. Martinez, Neftalí Reyes Mendez, Angélica Castro Rodríguez, Juan José López Negrete, Mileida Correa, José Gualinga, and Çaca Yvaire. (2024). “Nourishing Communal Territories of Life: Indigenous and Afro-Indigenous Resurgences beyond Earth Crisis.” In M. Frame, F. Mantz and S. Grant, eds. Grassroots Resistances, Alternatives and Solutions to the 21st Century Climate and Global Ecological Crises: Voices from the Global South. New York: Bloomsbury. 

Figueroa Helland, L. E., and Dulce A. Perez Aguilera. (forthcoming 2026). “A Historical Clash of Divergent Futures: Indigenous Territorial Rematriation as Sovereign Provisioning Futures versus Hegemonic Territorial Reorderings” In, Sarah Rotz, Sherry Pictou, Martha Stiegman and Adrianne Lickers Xavier, eds. Anti-Colonial Food Systems. Routledge.

Sánchez Álvarez, Miguel, and Figueroa Helland, L. E. 2024. “P’ijil k’opetik ta sk’elel, skoltael, yich’el ta muk’ ch’ul osil-balamil: Principios de Cosmovisión Maya Tsotsil para Honrar y Defender a la Madre Tierra.” Bajo el Volcán. Revista del Posgrado de Sociología, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla 5(10), 433–466. https://doi.org/10.32399/ICSYH.bvbuap.2954-4300.2024.5.10.757.

Figueroa Helland, L. E. and Jerry Harris (2023). Co-editors of the First Special Issue on “Earth Crisis and the Global Environmental Movement” (based on the co-organized conference of the same title (Aug 9-13)), Perspectives on Global Development and Technology. 

Figueroa Helland, L. E, and Jerry Harris. 2023. “Introduction to the [First] Special Volume: Earth Crisis and the Global Environmental Movement.” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology. 

Brito-Millan, M., L.E. Figueroa Helland, J. Guzman Morales, E. Harrison, J. Ng, L. Quintanilla, A. Salomón, and b.t. Werner., 2023.  “Beyond Green Colonialism in Global Environmental & Climate Politics: Towards Decolonial Solidarity with Mother Earth’s Revolt.” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology.

Figueroa Helland, L. E. 2022. “Indigenous Pathways beyond the “Anthropocene: Biocultural Climate Justice through Decolonization and Land Rematriation.” NYU Environmental Law Journal (ELJ)-- Special Volume on the 2022 Symposium: Free the Land—Land Tenure and Stewardship Reimagined.

Figueroa Helland, L.E., Abigail Perez Aguilera, and Felix Mantz, (2021). “Decolonize, ReIndigenize: Planetary Crisis, Biocultural Diversity, Indigenous Resurgence, and Land Rematriation.” In Iñaki Pradanos, Cathy Wagner, Suzanne McCullagh, Ilaria Tabusso Marcyan, Ryan Gunderson, eds. Contesting Extinctions: Decolonial and Regenerative Futures. Rowman & Littlefield. 

Thomas, C. and L. E. Figueroa Helland. 2021. “Agri(Cultural) Resistance: Food Sovereignty and Anarchism in Response to the Sociobiodiversity Crisis.” In M. Acker, M. Locret-Collet, J. Mateer, and S. Springer, eds. Inhabiting the Earth: Anarchist Political Ecology for Landscapes of Emancipation. Rowman & Littlefield.

Figueroa Helland, L. E., Cassidy Thomas, and Abigail Perez Aguilera. 2018. “Decolonizing Food Systems: Food Sovereignty, Indigenous Revitalization, and Agroecology as Counter-Hegemonic Movements.” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 17: 173-201.

Figueroa Helland, L. E., and P. Raghu. 2017. “Indigeneity Vs. ‘Civilization’: Indigenous Alternatives to The Planetary Rift In The World-System Ecology”. In J. Smith, M. Goodhart, P. Manning, and J. Markoff, eds., Social Movements and World System Transformation. London and New York: Routledge. 

Figueroa Helland, L. E., and T. Lindgren. 2016. “What Goes Around Comes Around: From the Coloniality of Power to the Crisis of Civilization.” In Journal of World Systems Research 22(2): 430-462; Special Issue on “Coloniality of Power and Hegemonic Shifts in the World-System”, edited by M. Boatca, A. Komlosy, and H. H. Nolte.

Figueroa Helland, L. E., T. Lindgren, and T. Pfaeffle. 2016. “Civilization on a Crash Course? Imperialism, Subimperialism and the Political-Ecological Breaking Point of the Modern/Colonial World-System.” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 15(1-2): 255-289.

Figueroa Helland, L. E., and L. I. Pradanos. 2015. “How to Listen to Pachamama’s Testimonio: Lessons from Indigenous Voices.” Studies in Twentieth & Twenty-First Century Literature 39(2).

Figueroa Helland, L. E. and Stefan P. Borg. 2013. “The Lure of State Failure–Critical Engagements with State Failure Discourse in World Politics,” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies.

Perez Aguilera, D. A. and L. E. Figueroa Helland. 2011. “Beyond Acculturation? “Political Change”, Indigenous Knowledges, and Intercultural Higher Education in Mexico.” Journal of Critical Education and Policy Studies (JCEPS) 9(2).

Figueroa Helland, L. E. and Dulce A. Perez Aguilera.. 2010/2011. "Conocimientos que cruzan fronteras: Colaboración transfronteriza en Educación Superior, México-EEUU" (Border-Crossing Knowledges: Transborder Collaboration in Higher Education, Mexico-USA). UNESCO Journal of Higher Education and Society/Educacion Superior y Sociedad (ESS) 15(2): 25-61. 

Manuscript in Progress

Figueroa Helland, L. E. Indigenous Resurgence and Earth Crisis: Decolonizing Pathways to Liberation and Regeneration (under contract with Routledge press). 

PhD Dissertation

Figueroa Helland, Leonardo E. Indigenous Philosophy and World Politics: Cosmopolitical Contributions from across the Americas. (PhD Dissertation, 2012, Arizona State University). Defended Dissertation Successfully with “Distinction” on 6/11/2012. URL: https://repository.asu.edu/items/15065 

Research Interests

AREAS OF EXPERTISE

Global Environmental and Climate Politics, Policy, Governance and Movements, Indigenous Studies, Political Ecology, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, and Indigenous Ecologies, Critical and Intersectional Environmental, Social and Political Theories, Biocultural Diversity, Food Sovereignty and Agroecology, Climate Change, Climate Justice, and Environmental Justice, Intersectional Human and Environmental Rights, Ecofeminism and Gender Ecologies, Indigenous, Decolonial, Intersectional and Intercultural Methodologies, Mixed, Critical, Qualitative & Quantitative Research Methods.