Mathis Stock
Full professor
University of Lausanne
Institute of geography and sustainability – Sion
Office 212
Ch. de l'Institut 18
CH-1967 Bramois (Sion)
 
 
 
Phone +41 27 205 7318
mathis.stock@unil.ch

Mathis Stock is full professor with the Institute of Geography and Sustainability and is director of the research group Cultures and natures of tourism.

His research is about the following questions:

  • The modalities of inhabiting in contemporary social figurations in which mobility and digitality play a predominant role: he designed the notions “polytopical dwelling" and “geographically plural individuals" in order to capture the contemporary modes of inhabiting. Tourist practices as specific forms of spatial practice and as part of individual styles of inhabiting have been especially in the focus. More recently, the importance of digital technologies as “computer aided dwelling" has been acknowledged.
  • Urbanisation through tourism as contribution to the research on “planetary urbanisation" is envisaged through the development of tourist places as geo-historic process. Specifically, the notion of “touristic capital" of place has been coined. It also entails the development of global centralities of resorts and the touristification of metropolises.
  • Theoretical geography: how to conceptualise space as a coherent and adequate approach in social sciences? How spatial dimensions could be integrated in social theory? Practice theory has been a major resource in order to reflect on inhabiting and the geographicity of social fields.
  • The geographicity of law: How spatial categories are inscribed in legal orders and how legal orders shape spatial formations? Especially, the legal issues of AirBnb, public space as highly regulated space, but also the contemporary “mobility regimes" are under scrutiny.