dr. (Julien-Francois) JF Gerber

Profile

Julien-François Gerber is Assistant Professor of Environment and Development at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague.

My disciplinary area of work is in political ecology, economic anthropology, agrarian studies, and ecological economics. In broad terms, I am interested in the relationships between the economy and the conditions for sustainability, flourishing, alienation and resistance.

So far my empirical focus has been on the expansion of capitalism in the rural sphere, particularly through the lenses of ownership, credit/debt, (de)commodification, conflicts, social metabolisms and the plantationocene. My main geographic area of research is the Himalayan region and India. I also did fieldwork in Indonesia, Cameroon and Ecuador.

Besides this, I am interested in bridging science, activism and healing for building more viable systems. Here, my focus has been on the degrowth movement and on theories of needs, values, and the "good life". I am also intrested in the application of psychoanalysis to the understanding of capitalist modernity and transformation.

From 2018-19, I was an ISRF Visiting Fellow at the LSE Department of Anthropology. Prior to joining the ISS, I was at the Royal University of Bhutan (2015-16), Jawaharlal Nehru University and TERI School of Advanced Studies (2012-14) and Harvard University (2010-12). I have a PhD in political ecology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

I am in the Editorial Team of the Journal of World-Systems Research (USA) and Ecology, Economy and Society (India). I am currently co-supervising six PhD students: Antonio Roman-Alcalá, Yukari Sekine, Amod Shah, Anna Voss, Mohsen Yazdanpanah and Haris Zargar.