Dr M. Koster (Martijn)

I am an associate professor at the department of Anthropology and Development Studies at Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. I have a PhD in Rural Development Sociology from Wageningen University (2009). My research is positioned at the intersection of political anthropology, critical development studies and urban studies. My core themes are 1) the in/formal relationships between residents and the state, and 2) urban development. My geographic focus is on Latin America (Brazil, Colombia and recently Cuba) and Europe (UK and The Netherlands). From January 2024 I will be the PI of the ethnographic research project ‘Politics of the Periphery’ in Urban Latin America: Reconceptualising Politics from the Margins’, funded through an ERC Consolidator Grant. From 2016-2022 I was the PI of the research project ‘Participatory urban governance between democracy and clientelism: Brokers and (in)formal politics’, financed through an ERC Starting Grant. I am co-founder and co-coordinator of the Anthropologies of the State Research Network of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). I have published numerous academic and non-academic book chapters and (open access) articles and guest-edited several special issues in peer-reviewed journals. I am regularly invited to present my work at universities in the Netherlands and abroad.
I teach a variety of courses on (urban) development, governance, citizenship, (informal) politics and the philosophy of science, in which I always include current affairs in society and recent trends in our field. I also supervise BA and MA theses on these and other topics.

Per 1 January 2023 I will move to the Sociology of Development and Change Group at Wageningen University.

• Anthropology and Development Studies