Prof. Dr. Javier Alfonso Lastra Bravo

Prof. Dr. Javier Lastra-Bravo is a sociologist and cultural anthropologist. He studied sociology at the Universidad de Concepción (Chile), where he began his academic career as a research associate and lecturer. He subsequently completed his doctorate at Leibniz University Hannover with a dissertation on territory, autonomy, and self-determination in Mapuche communities in southern Chile.

He currently heads the research area "Environmental Sociology and Global Transformations" at the Institute of Sociology, Leibniz University Hannover, and serves as Co-Director of the Regional Centre for Central America and the Caribbean of the Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies (CALAS). He also coordinates the international research project CROSSJET – At the Crossroads of Global Just Energy Transition (Volkswagen Foundation, 2025–2030), which examines the social and ecological implications of the global energy transition, with particular attention to lithium policies and the rights of Indigenous communities in South America.

Since 2026, he has additionally been a member of the Energy Research Centre at Leibniz University Hannover, which brings together the university's interdisciplinary energy research. This membership strengthens CROSSJET's links with other energy-related research areas and contributes to embedding questions of social and territorial justice within interdisciplinary energy transition research.

Between 2024 and 2025, he led the international scientific project of the World Health Organization (WHO) on the Global Plan of Action for the Health of Indigenous Peoples, which was directed towards developing intercultural health strategies and dismantling structural inequalities affecting Indigenous populations worldwide.

His research combines theoretical and empirical approaches from across Latin America — including Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, and Mexico — and focuses on social-ecological conflicts, environmental justice, extractivism, and cultural transformations. Over the course of his career, he has collaborated with international organisations such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization (WHO), and has served as a scientific advisor to the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP) and the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII).

He has received several fellowships and awards, among them a Change! Fellowship from the Volkswagen Foundation, as well as funding from the DAAD and the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR).

Javier Lastra-Bravo is an active member of a number of scholarly networks and professional associations, including the Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO), the German Sociological Association (DGS), the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), the Asociación Latinoamericana de Sociología (ALAS), and the Working Group on German Latin America Research (ADLAF).

Convinced of the importance of intercultural dialogue and transregional academic cooperation, he is committed to fostering exchange between Latin America and Europe in order to rethink social-ecological transformation processes from a perspective of global justice and sustainability.