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
S.AND – The Future of Coastal Cities in the Indian Ocean
Funded by German Research Foundation (DFG)
Duration: 6 years (2022-2028)
Locations: Denpasar (Indonesia), Bhasan Char (Bangladesh), Mombasa (Kenya), Goa (India),
Marseilles (France)
The group thinks with the contemporary socioecological conditions of Indian Ocean port cities and the material faculties of sand to show how this matter organizes and shapes practices of coastal protection.
S.AND designed a website to provide regular updates on its research and publish work of a growing network of sand researchers.
The project team is based at the Department for Anthropology of Politics and Governance at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle.