The Anthropology of Resources studies resource extraction's cultural, social, economic, and environmental aspects. Most of my research focused on small-scale gold mining in the Amazon region, especially in Brazil and the Guianas. I have also done fieldwork in Bolivia and collaborated with researchers in Colombia and Peru. In Suriname and French Guiana, I work with the Brazilian migrant miners and the Aluku and Ndyuka maroon populations in the gold fields. Most of my work in Brazil has been in Pará, notably in the Tapajós region. As part of the collaborative Gold Matters project, I have also done a bit of fieldwork in Ghana with my Leiden University colleague Sabine Luning. With my colleague Eva van Roekel I did a project on cross-border resource extraction related social and economic consequences of the Venezuelan crisis in Roraima and Bolívar.

I have several research affiliations in Brazil. Since 2013, I collaborate with the Research group Etnografias Contemporâneas: Memória, Identidades e Urbanidades (with Madiana Rodrigues) of the Universidade Federal de Roraima. Since 2018, I am visiting researcher at the Center for Environmental Studies and Research (NEPAM) and visiting professor and co-supervisor in the PhD Program Environment and Society in the same institution at Unicamp (University of Campinas). I am member of the editorial board of ERLACS, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Since 2023 I serve as Head of Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, in the Faculty of Social Sciences.

The increasing scarcity and potential depletion of natural resources and conflicts over their use, cause profound environmental and social changes. Questions about sustainability arise from concerns about the manageability of conflicting interests and impending resource shortages on a global scale. The anthropological lens helps to examine the processes of change from a holistic perspective, encompassing the explanations of actors in many different relations to the resources. How do people understand pollution, land grabbing, mining disasters and new policies governing their access to natural resource production, distribution, and consumption? And how do beliefs about the nature of natural resources relate to attitudes, behavior, and political choices? The Anthropology of Resources produces ethnographic analyses of the importance of mineral resources such as gold for the livelihoods of indigenous and migrant miners, insights and beliefs regarding the, and notions of customary law and the legality of access to minerals. It demonstrates how mineral extraction, although seemingly formally organized, is primarily informal on the margins of the global economic system. 

In the large research projects GOMIAM (2010-2016) and Gold Matters (2018-2022) (see below) my contribution was to investigate how gold mining practices are embedded in processes of Amazonian frontier territorialization and what this means for thinking on transformations to sustainability within environment, economy and community. What is the impact of small scale mining on governance of the environment, economic activities and human wellbeing?

My initial work on small-scale gold mining in Suriname, led to the comparative Amazon wide GOMIAM Project funded by NWO/WOTRO (2010-2016). See https://www.gomiam.org/ for more information on this research and policy project. GOMIAM found a follow-up with the ST-ASGM project in the EU Norface – Belmont Transformations to Sustainability (T2S) program. For more info, see: http://gold-matters.org/

Between April 2016 and April 2018 I spent most of my time in Brazil, working on a project commissioned by the Ministry of Mining and Energy and Worldbank in which my main contribution consisted of five field studies on gold, gems and construction materials. More information about this project can be found on the website of the ministry (http://www.mme.gov.br/web/guest/projetos/meta/apresentacao)

Currently I am involved in a project working on socio-biodiversity value chains in the Amazon, called LINKAGES/ENLACES, funded by NWO and FAPESP. See https://linkages-enlaces.humanities.uva.nl/en/. I also am member of the research Project Infrastructures, Sustainability, Commons, in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology. With Leonidas Oikonomakis and Dimitris Dalakoglou I work on the expectations and impacts surrounding offshore oil findings in the Guianas. See https://anthropologyofinfrastructures.weebly.com/sub-projects.html

I have supervised many Master and PhD candidates with topics related to religion, social movements and democratization and I am still available for such research projects. Projects on mining, cultural, economic and technological aspects of natural resource extraction and use, related migration, and sustainability more broadly interest me most. 

PhD theses supervised at VU include Cletus Gregor Barié (2024), Jesse Jonkman(2021), Jessica Greganich (2017), Jamile Santos Nascimento (2017), Letícia da Luz Tedesco (2015), Palloma Valle Menezes (2015), Lê Thi Dan Dung (2015), Luiz Guilherme Braga (2013), João Rickli (2010) and Andrea Damacena Martins (2004). 

PhD projects currently in progress are:

1. André Bakker, started 2008, Streaming Mediations. Cultural Heritage, Pentecostal Christianity and the Quest for Authenticity among the Pataxó). With Prof. dr. Birgit Meyer (UU).
2. Januária Pereira Mello, started 2020, Artisanal Mining Reserves (Reservas Garimpeiras) in the Brazilian Amazon. With Prof. dr. Eduardo Brondízio (Unicamp, Brazil/Indiana University Bloomington, US)
3. Lisa Ausic, started 2020, "More than weeds" - Herbalism as a mode of anti-colonial resistance in the upper Ucayali region, Peru. With dr. Peter Versteeg
4. Jop Koopman, started 2020, Resilience, adaptability, and perception of climate change among smallholder farmers in Indonesia. With Prof. dr. Fridus Steijlen
5. Beatrice Gibertini, started 2021, on Mining and poverty (an ADAPTED EU project). With Prof. dr. Remi Bazillier (Sorbonne, France)

Concluded PhD supervisions not registered at VU:

1. Raíssa Resende de Moraes, 2024, Arenas do garimpo em terras indígenas na Região entre o Alto Tapajós e o Alto Xingú. PhD at NEPAM, Universidade Estadual de Campinas - SP, Brazil (With dr. Lúcia da Costa Ferreira)
2. Dalila Silva Mello, 2017. O drama do gestor: Um estudo sobre gestão de áreas protegidas a partir da Estação Ecológica da Terra do Meio, Amazônia, Brasil. PhD at UERJ, Rio de Janeiro (with dr. Rosane Manhães Prado)
3. Pedro Baía Júnior, 2014. Entre o Ouro e a Biodiversidade: Garimpos e Unidades de Conservação na Região de Itaituba, Pará, Brasil. PhD at NAEA/UFPA, Belém (with dr. Armin Mathis)

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