Mark Vicol is Assistant Professor of Agrarian Sociology in the Rural Sociology Group and co-coordinator of the Critical Agrarian Studies research cluster at the Centre for Space, Place and Society (CSPS), Wagenigen University. His research and teaching focuses on the everyday political economy of agrarian change. He is particularly interested in questions about why certain livelihood pathways are possible for some households/individuals, but not for others, and how class processes manifest in everyday agrarian life. Vicol’s doctoral research at the University of Sydney explored the implications of contract farming for rural livelihoods and agrarian change in India. He has since worked on specialty coffee in Indonesia, elephant foot yam value chains in Myanmar, and the everyday political economy of labour in alternative agriculture in Europe, and published in journals such as World Development, Journal of Peasant Studies, Journal of Rural Studies, Journal of Agrarian Change, Journal of Economic Geography, Geoforum, and the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography. He is a co-founder of the Contract Farming Initiative, a network for researchers and activists interested in the dynamics and political economy of contract farming, rural livelihoods and agrarian change.
Light refreshments provided. No RSVP required.
