Dr. Paolo Gruppuso

Paolo Gruppuso is an anthropologist interested in nature conservation, water landscapes, and in the environmental and social history of wetlands and land reclamation. He obtained his PhD in social anthropology from the University of Aberdeen in 2016 with a dissertation on environmental contestations between farming and nature conservation in protected wetlands of Agro Pontino, Italy. This work, situated at the intersection of environmental history and social anthropology, critically examines how conservation efforts can create new forms of disempowerment.

He has held positions as a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science; research fellow at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy; and Landhaus Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich. He was a research fellow at the University of Catania, Italy, where he conducted research on socioecological relations along the Simeto river, Eastern Sicily.

Currently, he is the recipient of a DFG Eigene Stelle research grant for the project “Rethinking Wetlands (ReWet): An Environmental Anthropology of Wetlands,” running from November 2024 to October 2027.

RCC Research Project

Rethinking Wetlands (ReWet): An Environmental Anthropology of Wetlands

Selected Publications

• with Nigel Clark, Sasha Engelmann, Tim Ingold, Franz Krause, Gavin Lucas, Germain Meulemans, Cristián Simonetti, Bronislaw Szerszynski, and Laura Watts. “A Solid Fluids Lexicon.” Theory, Culture and Society 39, no. 2 (2022): 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764211030976.
• “In-between Solidity and Fluidity: The Reclaimed Marshlands of Agro Pontino.” Theory,
  Culture and Society 39, no. 2 (2022) : 53–73. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F02632764211038669.
• with Andrew Whitehouse. “Exploring Taskscapes: An Introduction.” Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale 28, no. 3 (2020): 588–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.12789.
• “Nature as a Constellation of Activities: Movement, Rhythm, and Perception in an Italian National Park.” Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale 28, no. 3 (2020): 629–45. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.12783.
• “Edenic Views in Wetland Conservation: Nature and Agriculture in the Fogliano Area, Italy.” Conservation & Society 16, no. 4 (2018): 397–408.
• “Geologic and Historical, Surface and Depth. Entanglement of Water and Temporality in a Contested Wetland of Agro Pontino.” AAM Archivio Antropologico Mediterraneo 19, no. 2 (2017): 69–79. https://doi.org/10.7432/AAM190205.