Dr Gregory Thaler

I am an interdisciplinary environmental social scientist. My research focuses on the political dimensions of social and ecological transformations.

My research examines the political ecology and political economy of development, global environmental governance, and agrarian politics. I also have a special interest in comparative, ethnographic, and action-research methodologies. Much of my research is focused on Brazil, and I co-direct the Brazil Natural Resource Governance Initiative with colleagues at the University of Georgia (USA) and the Federal University of Pará (Brazil). Past research has also taken me to Bolivia, Ecuador, Indonesia, and to organisational headquarters and international negotiations in the US and Europe. These experiences are discussed in part in my book, Saving a Rainforest and Losing the World: Conservation and Displacement in the Global Tropics, which examines agricultural development and forest conservation across Brazil, Bolivia, and Indonesia.

Before coming to Oxford, I was an Assistant Professor of International Affairs at the University of Georgia (USA). I received my PhD in Government from Cornell University (2017), and I hold an MA from Cornell University (2014) and a BA from Yale University (2007). Prior to beginning my PhD, I was a UNESCO-Fulbright Fellow with UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme, a Fulbright Grantee in Ecuador, and an apprentice on an organic, community-supported farm in my home state of Maine, USA.

I am currently developing new transdisciplinary collaborations focused on agroforestry and climate change in the Brazilian Amazon.

I teach on the 'Environmental Geography' course as part of the BA in Geography. I teach on the 'Conservation and Society' course for the MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Nature Recovery (BCNR) and 'Environment, Governance and Politics' for the MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance (NSEG).

• Ritter, E. and Thaler, G.M. (2023) Technical Reform or Radical Justice? Environmental Discourse in Non-Governmental Organizations. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 6(3): 2071-2095. 
• Thaler, G.M. (2021) Ethnography of Environmental Governance: Towards an Organizational Approach. Geoforum, 120: 122-131. 
• Thaler, G.M. (2021) Equifinality in the Smallholder Slot: Cash Crop Development in the Brazilian Amazon and Indonesian Borneo. Comparative Politics, 53(4): 687-722. 
• Partelow, S., Winkler, K.J., and Thaler, G.M. (2020) Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations and Global Environmental Discourse. PLOS ONE, 15(5): e0232945. 
• Thaler, G.M., Viana, C. and Toni, F. (2019) From Frontier Governance to Governance Frontier: The Political Geography of Brazil’s Amazon Transition. World Development, 114: 59-72. 
• Schmink, M., Hoelle, J., Valério Gomes, C. and Thaler, G.M. (2019) From Contested to ‘Green’ Frontiers in the Amazon? A Long-Term Analysis of São Félix do Xingu, Brazil. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 46(2): 377-399. 
• Thaler, G.M. (2017) The Land Sparing Complex: Environmental Governance, Agricultural Intensification, and State Building in the Brazilian Amazon. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 107(6): 1424-1443. 
• Thaler, G.M. and Anandi, C.A.M. (2017) Shifting Cultivation, Contentious Land Change and Forest Governance: The Politics of Swidden in East Kalimantan. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44(5): 1066-1087. 
• Thaler, G.M. (2015) The Twenty-First Century Agricultural Land Rush. In, Herring, R.J. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Food, Politics and Society, pp. 822-43. New York: Oxford University Press.