Profile
Roles:
- Lecturer in Business and Society
- Member of the Department of Business and Society
- Member of the Centre on Labour, Sustainability and Global Production (CLaSP)
Biography:
Matan is Lecturer in Business and Society and joined Queen Mary in 2024. His background is in cultural anthropology, political economy, and political ecology. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Michigan and an MA in Sociology and Anthropology from Tel Aviv University.
A long-time activist, he has participated in movements against militarism and occupation, in solidarity with migrant workers, and for the democratisation of academic life. His research on agricultural labour migration from South and Southeast Asia to the Middle East encompasses geo-political and geo-economic processes from the perspective of the most marginalised. Matan’s research interests include (but are not limited to!) the political ecology of desert agriculture, the racialisation of agrarian labour, and labour migration in the Indian Ocean world.
His most recent interests span the history of proletarianisation in Palestine/Israel and elsewhere and the synergy between exploitation and elimination of the indigenous in colonial contexts. His book, Capitalist Colonial: Thai Migrant Workers in Israeli Agriculture, is out now and available from Stanford University Press.