The Anthropology of Resources studies resource extraction's cultural, social, economic, and environmental dimensions. 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 conducted fieldwork in Ghana with my Leiden University colleague Sabine Luning (1959-2025). In collaboration with my colleague Eva van Roekel, I undertook a project on the social and economic consequences of cross-border resource extraction in the context of the Venezuelan crisis in Roraima and Bolívar.

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

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 Eva Koemar I work on the expectations and impacts surrounding offshore oil findings in the Guianas. See https://anthropologyofinfrastructures.weebly.com/sub-projects.html Since 2025 I participate in the Research Advisory Board of the INFRACURSIONS project led by Amy Penfield (University of Bristol) and funded by UKRI.

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 Jop Koopman (2026), Beatrice Gibertini (2026), 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. Carmen Pérez, started 2023, Mental Health, neoliberalism and Structural violence: The case of Tarapacá. With dr. Eva van Roekel and dr. Lorraine Nencel
5. Ana Inácio Sola, started 2025, Repair or Reproduction: Conditions of (Im)possibility in Communities Affected by Petrochemical Extractivism in Alagoas, with dr. Flávio Eiró and dr. Robert Larruina
6. Mariel Daek, started 2025, Governing Poverty through Labour: Productive Inclusion in Brazil and Chile. Subjectivities, classifications, and moralities at the frontlines of Social Policy. With dr. Flávio Eiró and dr. Gabriela Lotta (Fundação Getúlio Vargas, São Paulo)
7. Igor von Rosenberg, started 2025, Lithium Poetics: an entanglement of Chinese and Argentinian worldmaking. With dr. Pablo Ampuero Ruiz.

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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