dr. JF (Julien-Francois) Gerber

Biography

I’m an Associate Professor of Environment and Development, broadly interested in the political economy of sustainability – including in its anthropological and psycho-spiritual dimensions. My research explores some of the pathways and obstacles to human and ecological flourishing. This concern has led me to four main lines of inquiry, with a particular geographical focus on South Asia and Western Europe:

1) The dynamics of capitalist development, particularly through the institutions that regulate owning and owing. I examine how systems of ownership and debt shape economies, both materially and sujectively. My empirical work has focused on agrarian contexts in Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Cameroon, and Ecuador, alongside engagements with economic theory – particularly Marxist, institutional, and ecological economics.

2) Social movements and alternatives. I study the role of collective mobilisations in bringing about change and alternatives, including at an epistemological level. I have worked on and with environmental justice, agrarian, and anti-debt movements. My current research focuses on degrowth, and especially on its connections with the rural world, debt, the pluriverse, and psychology.

3) Alienation, healing, and social flourishing. Is changing the politico-institutional structure enough for alternatives to flourish? Inspired by critical theory, I have explored the contributions of psychoanalysis and ecopsychology to processes of transformation, with a particular interest in theories of needs, values, alienation, and the self/soul.

4) Sustainability and spiritual ecology. Capitalist modernity is not only a biophysical regime but also a metaphysical one. I’m engaged in a long-term research that examines capitalism’s ontology/ideology and its implications, and explores alternatives – particularly traditions more attuned to the world’s animacy and interconnectedness.

Prior to joining the ISS, I was based at universities in Bhutan, India, and the USA, including the Royal University of Bhutan (2015-16), Jawaharlal Nehru University (2012-13), and Harvard University (2010-12). I hold an MSc (ecology, bioanthropology) from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and a PhD in political ecology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (supervised by Joan Martínez-Alier and Giorgos Kallis).

In 2018–19, I was awarded an ISRF Fellowship to work on debt at the Department of Anthropology of the London School of Economics (sponsored by David Graeber).

In 2023, I completed an Advanced Certificate in Ecopsychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, USA. I am currently finalising training in Gestalt psychotherapy (an offshoot of psychoanalysis focusing on body awareness, phenomenology, and system theory).

I’m presently co-supervising eight PhD researchers: Samuel Agyekum, Gertrude Aputiik, Xander Creed, Jed Alegado, Fatema Baheranwala, Iftikhar Hussain, Nina Swen, and Haris Zargar.