The sociologist and writer Maristella Svampa was born in 1961 in the town of Allen, in the Argentine province of Río Negro. She is the head of research at the National Council for Science and Technology Research (CONICET), and also works as a professor at La Plata National University. She has written many books about social movements in Latin America, as well as three novels. In 2019 her book “Neo-extractivism in Latin America” was published by Cambridge University Press. She lives in Buenos Aires.