Dr Maria Eugenia Robles Mengoa is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the African Leadership Centre, King's College London, working on the project Justice in Critical Minerals Governance and Energy Transitions. She contributes to the development of a hermeneutical ethnography approach with research partners in Chile, Ghana and Australia.

Eugenia is a Peruvian-Bolivian social scientist specialising in the social dimensions of mining, particularly gender, labour and regulation. She holds a PhD in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Policy (IOB), University of Antwerp (2026). Her doctoral research examined regulatory ambiguities, legal loopholes and gendered agency in artisanal and small-scale gold mining, drawing on ethnographic research in Peru, Colombia and the Philippines. A key contribution was her development of endurance as an analytical lens to understand agency under conditions of structural constraint, uncertainty and violence.

Her research combines ethnography and quantitative analysis, alongside an interest in creative and visual approaches to knowledge production. She also explores the interpretive and ethical challenges of researching silence. Eugenia has delivered guest lectures and invited talks at academic institutions across Europe and Latin America. Beyond academia, she worked as International Projects Manager at Instituto Brasil Solidário, coordinating education projects across Latin America.

Research 

• Critical minerals and energy transitions
• Artisanal and small-scale gold mining
• Mineral value chains
• Gender, labour and masculinities
• Gender-based violence and sex trafficking within extractivism
• Endurance and agency
• Ethnography and mixed methods
• Creative and visual methods

Eugenia’s research explores how extraction is lived and endured. Through ethnographic research in Peru, Colombia and the Philippines, she has studied artisanal and small-scale gold mining from mine to market, examining gold’s materiality and commercialisation alongside labour, gender, masculinities, violence, health and regulatory ambiguity. Her work develops endurance as an analytical lens for understanding agency under conditions of uncertainty and constraint. She combines ethnography and quantitative analysis, and has extensive experience working in remote and high-risk mining settings and handling sensitive information ethically. At King’s, she contributes to the hermeneutical ethnography strand of a collaborative project on justice in critical minerals governance across Chile, Ghana and Australia. Focusing on lithium, the team follows mineral value chains from upstream extraction to downstream activities, exploring how different actors interpret justice, how knowledge circulates across scales, and whose experiences and silences are recognised or overlooked.

PhD Supervision 

• Extractive industries, natural resource governance and energy transitions
• Legal and regulatory frameworks in mining and resource extraction
• Informal and illegal markets in extractive industries or elsewhere
• Gender, gender-based violence, labour, social relations and agency
• Rural development, livelihoods and social inequalities
• Andean South America, with particular expertise in rural and mining communities
• Ethnographic research, qualitative and mixed methods

Expertise and public engagement 

• Community feedback sessions sharing research findings with miners and local stakeholders in La Rinconada, Peru, and Mindanao, the Philippines
• Policy briefs translating research on artisanal and small-scale gold mining in Peru and the Philippines for policymakers (IOB, University of Antwerp, 2022)
• Lead author of a chapter on women and mercury exposure in La Rinconada, Peru, for Le tour du monde en 80 mines [Around the World in 80 Mines], a book for general audiences published by IRD Éditions (forthcoming)
• Invited speaker at the public webinar Femmes, travail et agency dans les mondes miniers [Women, work and agency in mining worlds], French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD), with Pascale Absi
• Guest lectures and invited presentations at UCLouvain, Belgium, the 12th FLARE Annual Meeting, University of Deusto, Spain (2026), and Géosciences Environnement Toulouse, University of Toulouse, France (2027)
• Invited discussant on lithium and anticipatory politics at the Mining Transitions Special Issue Workshop, HIVA, KU Leuven, Belgium (2026)
• International Projects Manager at Instituto Brasil Solidário, coordinating free, game-based financial education programmes across Latin America
• Available for media and policy engagement on artisanal and small-scale mining, gender and violence in extractive economies, mineral value chains and critical minerals governance

Available for media and policy discussions on artisanal and small-scale mining, gender, labour and violence in extractive economies, mineral value chains, lithium and critical minerals governance