I’m an environmental anthropologist whose research focuses on urban infrastructures, materiality, and social inequality. 
        In urban Java, where I conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork, I studied the phenomenon of tidal flooding (rob) to understand the production of chronic environmental crisis in late industrialism. My first book Building on Borrowed Time: Rising Seas and Failing Infrastructure (University of Minnesota Press, 2021) was awarded the Social Science Book Prize by the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies. 
       My current research project focuses on the place of sand and other sediments in making urban futures, especially governance responses to land loss and oceanic pollution. In an ongoing side project, I explore coastal repair and fortification with alternative types of concrete. 
        The best way to get in touch with me is via email: ley@eth.mpg.de