Team

Paule Pastré

Paule Pastré is a doctoral candidate in Anthropology at the Institute of Social Anthropology of the University of Bern. She is currently working on the interface between climate change mitigation and the protection of foreign investors in the energy sector through international investment arbitration. She graduated in Social Anthropology from the EHESS (Paris), where she conducted research on the rights of nature movement, after obtaining a degree in Art History from the Ecole du Louvre (Paris) and a Maitrise’s degree in Law from the Université Paris Saclay (Paris).

Matthieu Bolay

Matthieu Bolay is a social anthropologist. He leads the SNSF project Arbitrex at the University of Bern and is an associate professor at the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland (HES-SO), HETS Geneva. He obtained his PhD from the University of Neuchâtel and previously worked at the London School of Economics (doc.mobility), HEP Fribourg, and the Graduate Institute Geneva. He does research in legal and economic anthropology in which his interests are concerned with knowledge politics, norm making, and valuation practices, and their interplay in the governance of supply chains, labour, and migration.

Johannes Knierzinger

Johannes Knierzinger is Senior Lecturer for Development Policy at the Department for Development Studies at the University of Vienna. In his dissertation he worked on the socio-economic impact of bauxite mining in West Africa. Most recently, he has compared the resource crises of the 1970s and the 2000s with a focus on EU-Africa relations.

Manon Fragnière

Manon Fragnière is pursuing an MA in Social Anthropology at the University of Bern. Her research interests lie in political and legal anthropology, with a focus on transnational governance, international arbitration, and the socio-political dimensions of extractivism. As part of her master’s thesis, she conducted field research in Ecuador, examining how legal mechanisms are mobilized within socio-environmental conflicts to negotiate, reinforce, or contest power asymmetries between state, corporate, and civil society actors. Manon holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Lausanne.

Christoph Kaufmann

Christoph Kaufmann currently works as a senior researcher at the Mining and Environment Innovation Center (CIMA), Faculty of Jurisprudence, Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá, where he develops research and consultancies on topics related to extractivism, socio-environemntal conflicts and environmental justice in Colombia and Latin America. Combining research, consulting and training for a broad array of actors and institutions, his work emphasises the critical analysis of national and international legislation aimed at improving the socio-environmental sustainability of extractive projects; control mechanisms over the gold supply chain; and the protection of the fundamental rights of human and environmental rights defenders.