oiip

Dr. Lydia Letsch is an interdisciplinary researcher working at the intersection of border studies, critical security studies and political ecology, with a particular focus on North Africa. She holds a PhD in Transnational Governance from the Scuola Normale Superiore and Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Italy, where her doctoral research examined how communities experience and respond to insecurity in the borderlands of Morocco and Tunisia. Her broader research interests include borders and bordering processes, bottom-up approaches to security, crises and socio-ecological transformations. Her work draws on ethnographic and participatory methods, with a particular interest in knowledge co-production. As an Ernst Mach Fellow at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (oiip), her current research focuses on climate adaptation in North African borderlands, exploring how local knowledge and borderland perspectives can contribute to broader debates on climate adaptation and resilience.