Matt Barlow

Matt Barlow is an environmental anthropologist by training with interests in science & technology studies, environmental humanities, and critical geography. Using ethnographic and historical methods, his research focuses on how British engineering and infrastructure building in the 19th and 20th centuries continues to shape dominant approaches to environmental governance and urban development in postcolonial India. More specifically, his Ph.D. dissertation, Waste in the Tropics: Urban Environments and (post)colonial Infrastructure in Kochi, India explores negotiations over how to address a waste crisis in Kochi's backwaters throughout 2018-2019. This research demonstrates how monsoonal wetness confounds various approaches to environmental governance and waste management in Kochi, highlighting the need to rethink urban development in monsoonal South India. As Climate Postdoctoral Research Fellow at CASI, Matt will be working on his first book project titled Weathering Waste, while also contributing to Nikhil Anand's ongoing project, "Stories of Climate Action: Negotiating Planning in Mumbai's Wetscapes."

Matt completed his Ph.D. in Anthropology with Dean's Commendation from The University of Adelaide in 2023, the same year he completed a 9-month Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of St. Andrews on the project "Toward a Political Ecology of Volume." His research article "Burning Wet Waste: Environmental Particularity, Material Specificity, and Universality of Infrastructure," was awarded the 2023 Nadel Prize for Excellence in Ethnographic Writing from The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology. Between 2019 and 2022, Matt was a contributing producer for the Conversations in Anthropology podcast collective, as well as an active member of the TopEndSTS research collective based in Darwin, Australia. He is passionate about alternative and creative forms of academic writing and collaboration, including podcasts, zines, multimedia exhibitions and place-based workshops. You can find him on social media with the handle: @materialbarlow