Andrea Mathez

After 10 years of studying, working, and living in seven countries over three continents, I have started my position as a Graduate Assistant-PhD in the Institute of Geography and Sustainability (IGD) of the University of Lausanne, under the supervision of Christian Kull.

In my doctoral research I aim to explore how (geo)politics and the intimate are entangled with regard to food and agriculture and how to research alternative agricultures beyond North-South divides. I study alternative agricultures in Switzerland and Morocco - forms of peasant agro-ecology that have persisted or emerged outside of agricultural planning and agro-industry - with the idea that these forms of agriculture carry within them the seeds for imagining and implementing socially more just and ecologically more viable agri-food futures. I explore the multiple dimensions – economic, political, historic, cultural, socio-ecological and embodied – that (re)make these farming experiences in both countries. And, I adopt a Community Economies approach to study the more-than-human relations constituting these agricultures.

At the IGD, I also coordinate the Agroecology Initiative.

Before joining the IGD, I worked as assistant of the president of the Campus de la Transition in France, and as teaching assistant for the class - What ethics for the ecological transition - tought by Cécile Renouard at Sciences Po Paris. I also worked on the institutionalisation and the discourses of pastoralism at the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) in Rome, and on local food circuits for the International Urban Food Network (IUFN) in France.

I hold a Bachelor in Socioeconomics from the University of Geneva, a Masters in International Development, specialisation in agriculture from Sciences Po Paris and a Masters in Globalisation, Environment and Politics from King's College London. I also studied Arabic at the School of Governance and Economics in Rabat, Morocco.