Valdivia examines the political dimensions of natural resource governance in Latin America: how Latin American states, firms, and civil society appropriate and transform resources to meet their interests, and how capturing and putting resources to work transforms cultural and ecological communities. Using ethnographic and archival methods, her research has focused on resource governance in Ecuador and Bolivia, where state-led development, economic neoliberalization, and social movements fuel intense conflicts. She emphasizes environmental histories, power relations, and the co-production of humans and nonhumans to recognize that struggles over resources are simultaneously struggles over political life. At UNC, she has developed three main areas of research: (1) political ecology of oil in Ecuador, (2) agrarian transitions in Bolivia and (3) conservation and development in the Galápagos Islands.