Climate; environment; indigenous peoples and the state; politics

I am broadly interested in rural livelihoods, identity politics and resource struggles from a qualitative, ethnographic perspective. In my research I focus on the intersections between local territorial control, externally driven demands on resources and community –cum-household conflict and cooperation. I have extensive field work experience from Latin America (Peru, Argentina) and Denmark and have published work that focus on how resources produce imaginaries of community in times of rapid ecological, social and economic change. 

I am currently part of the Rule and Rupture project headed by Prof. Christian Lund. Besides my ongoing work with rural communities in the Peruvian Andes I am now increasingly focusing on the Argentinean Patagonia, being particularly interested in frontier dynamics and its relation to resource extraction and protected areas. 

I teach the MSc courses Environmental Justice, Political Ecology and Gender, Environment & Sustainable Development, and reguarly supervise MSc thesis projects that focus on qualitative approaches to environment, resources and identity politics. 

Mattias is doing research within the Rule and Rupture project, which is funded by the European Research Council (ERC).

Mattias is co-section editor on Political Ecology at the Commodity Frontiers Journal.

Mattias is associate editor of Debates en Sociología (Peru)