On 1 September 2018, the Executive Board of Erasmus University appointed Murat Arsel as Professor of Political Economy of Sustainable Development.
Murat Arsel teaches in the Development Studies MA programme at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) and is Research Group Coordinator of the Political Ecology Research Group.
His research is concerned with the possibility of achieving emancipatory yet ecologically sustainable socioeconomic development within the context of global capitalism. The focus is specifically on social conflicts – which Arsel conceives of as inevitable yet unpredictable – in sites where nature and natural resources are being extracted or mobilized in the name of rapid industrial development.
In two related strands of inquiry, Arsel uses these conflicts to understand how social actors seek to redirect the powers of nation states towards their vision of just and sustainable development and to interrogate the ability of capitalism to respond to environmental crises at various scales.
Currently Arsel is developing a new line of inquiry that interrogates the utility of the concept of class to our understanding of societal responses to climate change.