Dr Matt Wilde
Small Group Project 2023-24
Beyond Net-Zero: Assessing and Extending Social and Environmental Understandings of Wind Power
Adopting a multi-disciplinary and multi-sited approach, this project examines the material, socio-economic and ethical practices that constitute wind energy, and interrogates them for their spatially disparate impacts on the places and populations that are integral to its production. Specifically, this project traces the metals – copper, steel, rare earths – and materials (i.e. concrete) that comprise the materiality of wind turbines, as well as the financial actors and institutions that invest in and profit from Net-Zero, in order to make the largely obscured spaces and relations of wind energy legible.
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Biography
Matt is an interdisciplinary social scientist who specialises in ethnographic research on energy and natural resources, urban politics, morality and the state. He received his PhD in Anthropology from the London School of Economics (LSE) in 2013 and previously held research and teaching positions with the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS), the University of Sussex and the LSE.
Matt's regional interests cover Latin America, the UK and the USA. His work has been funded by the British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS) and the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF).
Matt's research explores how contemporary capitalism shapes people's everyday lives in urban settings. He is particularly interested in the challenges that progressive urban social movements face, and in the diverse democratic experiments, moral subjectivities and life trajectories that are produced through efforts to overcome entrenched injustices.
Matt's first monograph examined the lived experience of political change, moral uncertainty and economic crisis amid Venezuela's controversial Bolivarian Revolution. Titled A Blessing and a Curse: Oil, Politics and Morality in Bolivarian Venezuela (2023, Stanford University Press), the book draws on ethnographic research conducted in an urban barrio over the course of a decade (2008-2018) to explore how Venezuela's contradictory relationship with petroleum shaped myriad aspects of urban life during a period of complex social upheaval. As well as offering an accessible way of understanding the many paradoxes of Bolivarian Venezuela, the book also provides an original take on current debates about democracy, fossil capitalism and revolutionary change.
Matt's current research traces the experiences of Venezuelan migrants who have left the country amid a decade-long multidimensional crisis. After beginning this work in Colombia, he is now focusing on those who have made their way to the United States. This emerging research uses the Venezuelan migrant experience to explore wider questions about the (geo)politics of sanctuary cities.
Alongside his work in the Americas, Matt has also carried out ethnographic fieldwork on the politics of housing in London as part of a collaborative Europe-wide project looking at advice, austerity governance and community activism. His work is undergirded by a broad political and theoretical interest in the emancipatory potential of cities and urban life.
Matt's regional interests cover Latin America, the UK and the USA. His work has been funded by the British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS) and the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF).
Matt's research explores how contemporary capitalism shapes people's everyday lives in urban settings. He is particularly interested in the challenges that progressive urban social movements face, and in the diverse democratic experiments, moral subjectivities and life trajectories that are produced through efforts to overcome entrenched injustices.
Matt's first monograph examined the lived experience of political change, moral uncertainty and economic crisis amid Venezuela's controversial Bolivarian Revolution. Titled A Blessing and a Curse: Oil, Politics and Morality in Bolivarian Venezuela (2023, Stanford University Press), the book draws on ethnographic research conducted in an urban barrio over the course of a decade (2008-2018) to explore how Venezuela's contradictory relationship with petroleum shaped myriad aspects of urban life during a period of complex social upheaval. As well as offering an accessible way of understanding the many paradoxes of Bolivarian Venezuela, the book also provides an original take on current debates about democracy, fossil capitalism and revolutionary change.
Matt's current research traces the experiences of Venezuelan migrants who have left the country amid a decade-long multidimensional crisis. After beginning this work in Colombia, he is now focusing on those who have made their way to the United States. This emerging research uses the Venezuelan migrant experience to explore wider questions about the (geo)politics of sanctuary cities.
Alongside his work in the Americas, Matt has also carried out ethnographic fieldwork on the politics of housing in London as part of a collaborative Europe-wide project looking at advice, austerity governance and community activism. His work is undergirded by a broad political and theoretical interest in the emancipatory potential of cities and urban life.
Biographical details correct as of 06.10.25