Prof. Heinzpeter Znoj (Institute for Social Anthropology),
who conducts research on palm oil in the Indonesian provinces of Jambi and West Papua. Both provinces are particularly affected by the spread of huge palm oil plantations;
Prof. Tobias Haller (Institute of Social Anthropology),
who has distinguished with his research on land grabbing in Africa and wrote his dissertation on Cameroon;
Prof. Christof Dejung (Historical Institute),
who has researched the history of global markets, commodity trade, research methods in global studies and social processes in the globalized world;
Dr. Pilar Ramirez-Gröbli (Center for Global Studies),
who as a political scientist has researched peasant resistance to palm oil plantations in Colombia and who initiated this research network;
Dr. Sabin Bieri (Center for Development and Environment),
who used socio-geographical methods to research rural development in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia, especially from a gender perspective. Her expertise in combining qualitative and quantitative methods is crucial for the interdisciplinary integration and generalizability of the research findings;
Dr. Elisabeth Bürgi (World Trade Institute),
who deals with the contradictions and their possible resolution between free trade agreements and the UN sustainability goals from a legal perspective;
Dr. Alex Gertschen (Center for Global Studies),
who deals with the political economy of globalization, social responsibility of transnational corporations and economic history of Europe and Latin America, especially Mexico;
Dr. Moritz von Brescius (Historical Institute),
who has researched the temporal logic of rubber imperialism in the global tropics and the imperial and global history;
Prof. Dr. Monika Arnez (Institute of Social Anthropology),
who conducts research on resource extraction, infrastructure and its social and political impacts, ecological knowledge and governance, and Islam, environmental awareness and gender relations in Indonesia and Malaysia.
External members who have expressed an interest in a close exchange and who will occasionally be invited to workshops are Carmenza Castiblanco, (Universidad Nacional de Bogota), who works in Colombia on palm oil from an environmental science perspective, and Dianto Bachriadi (Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta), anthropologist and political scientist, who is researching new peasant movements in Indonesia in the context of land grabbing.
