Member Profiles

Austin Zeiderman is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics. He specializes in the cultural and political dimensions of urbanization, development, and the environment in Latin America, and holds a PhD in Anthropology from Stanford University as well as a Master of Environmental Science degree from Yale University.

His first book, Endangered City: The Politics of Security and Risk in Bogotá (2016, Duke University Press), focuses on the everyday workings of the state to protect poor and vulnerable citizens from a broad range of threats. Drawing on ethnographic research in the self-built settlements of Bogotá’s urban periphery, Endangered City sheds light on how the imperative to govern the present in anticipation of future harm reconfigures the political life of contemporary cities.

Austin’s current research examines environmental and infrastructural transformations motivated by the promise of a post-conflict future in Colombia. He has written about racialized violence and displacement linked to port expansion in Buenaventura and is currently focusing on plans to restore commercial shipping to the Magdalena River and to create a multimodal logistics corridor between the interior and the sea.