Dominic Piacentini

Dominic joined the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center in 2022 as a Graduate Student Research Assistant. He is completing his PhD in Anthropology & Environmental Policy at the University of Maine. His research interests revolve around issues of access in changing political and ecological environments and include resource use in contested property regimes, the public use of private space, dispossession, extractive industry and energy development, wild-growing foods and medicines, and plant–human relations. His dissertation follows the construction of major pipeline infrastructure in Appalachia, the impacts these projects have had on land use and land ownership, and the formal and informal claims people, plants, and pipelines make to land and property. At the Policy Center, Dominic assists in projects related to the opioid crisis including the Maine Naloxone Distribution Initiative and Maine’s Overdose Review Panel.