Vito Laterza
Vito is Associate Professor in the Department of Global Development and Planning, University of Agder, Norway. In Agder, he leads the Sustainability, Digitalisation and Communication focus area at the Centre for Digital Transformation (CeDiT). He was a 2024-2025 SCAS-Nordic Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala.
He received a BSc in Employment Relations & Human Resource Management from LSE, and an MPhil in Social Anthropological Research and a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge.
He is currently work package leader and Management Board member in the Horizon Europe project ReMeD - Resilient Media for Democracy in the Digital Age (2023-2026). As Head of the ReMeD Methodology Coordination Group, he leads a pan-European qualitative study of how professional journalists, alternative & community media content producers, and citizens use and interact with digital platforms.
Vito is a co-editor of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies, editor of the Humanities and Social Sciences Communications' thematic collection "Mediated Populism", a member of the editorial board of the journal Global Networks, and a member of the international editorial board of HUMA - The Institute for Humanities in Africa at the University of Cape Town. He was the founder and chief editor of three science communication blogs: Corona Times; The Human Economy Blog; and Democracy in Action. He served as Communication Strategy Adviser for WWQA - World Water Quality Alliance, a United Nations Environment Programme partnership.
He has published widely in leading international journals such as The Journal of Development Studies; Energy Research & Social Science; The Extractive Industries and Society; Review of African Political Economy; Journal of Contemporary African Studies; Technology, Pedagogy and Education; and Anthropology Today, and academic presses such as Cambridge University Press; Routledge; Palgrave Macmillan; and Berghahn.
He held research and teaching positions at the University of Cambridge, University of Oslo, University of Cape Town, University of Pretoria, Bristol UWE, and University of Worcester (UK). He has held visiting fellowships at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Nordregio, and University of Mauritius.
His research has been funded by Horizon Europe, the Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and the Social Sciences (NOS-HS), Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Sweden), the Norwegian Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), Jisc (UK), the National Institute of Health Research (UK), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (US), the National Research Foundation (South Africa), the Tertiary Education Commission (Mauritius), the SAHEE Foundation (Switzerland) and the Cambridge Newton Trust.
He writes regularly for national and international media, such as Al Jazeera English, Boston Review, Foreign Affairs, Africa Is A Country, and Daily Maverick. He has been a guest speaker on South African national radio for SAfm, Cape Talk, Radio 702, and Voice of the Cape.
SCHOLARLY FOCUS
Vito is an anthropologist, media scholar, and political analyst with an interdisciplinary orientation. His approach is characterised by a systemic integration of ethnography, macro-level structural analysis, and epistemological & reflexive inquiry, in the tradition of “big ideas” social science and social theory.
His current work focuses digitalisation, new media, and communication, with interests in: political communication, digital propaganda, right-wing populism and digital democracy; social and organisational impact of digital technologies & AI; critical higher education studies; and green transition.
Vito has carried out field research in South Africa, Eswatini, UK, Norway and Italy. His early career was characterised by a specialism in southern and central Africa, which over the years has expanded into a focus on Europe, the Nordics, and North America.
His past work has focused extensively on political economy & ecology, specifically: global & regional development, industrialisation & green transitions; and global li-ion battery value and supply chains. He coordinated the Battery Justice Research Network (BATJUST), a global network of social scientists and sustainability scientists in five continents working on justice and transparency issues related to global li-ion battery value and supply chains.
His doctoral research in Cambridge (2005-2011) was an ethnography of timber workers in the Kingdom of Eswatini. He studied in a former asbestos mining town, redeveloped as a social enterprise by white southern African and North American Pentecostal Christian missionaries. For-profit economic activities in the forestry industry were carried out in tandem with orphan care services. The study was extended to the adjacent rural community. This work brings together political economy, political ecology and phenomenological anthropology.
He received a BSc in Employment Relations & Human Resource Management from LSE, and an MPhil in Social Anthropological Research and a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge.
He is currently work package leader and Management Board member in the Horizon Europe project ReMeD - Resilient Media for Democracy in the Digital Age (2023-2026). As Head of the ReMeD Methodology Coordination Group, he leads a pan-European qualitative study of how professional journalists, alternative & community media content producers, and citizens use and interact with digital platforms.
Vito is a co-editor of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies, editor of the Humanities and Social Sciences Communications' thematic collection "Mediated Populism", a member of the editorial board of the journal Global Networks, and a member of the international editorial board of HUMA - The Institute for Humanities in Africa at the University of Cape Town. He was the founder and chief editor of three science communication blogs: Corona Times; The Human Economy Blog; and Democracy in Action. He served as Communication Strategy Adviser for WWQA - World Water Quality Alliance, a United Nations Environment Programme partnership.
He has published widely in leading international journals such as The Journal of Development Studies; Energy Research & Social Science; The Extractive Industries and Society; Review of African Political Economy; Journal of Contemporary African Studies; Technology, Pedagogy and Education; and Anthropology Today, and academic presses such as Cambridge University Press; Routledge; Palgrave Macmillan; and Berghahn.
He held research and teaching positions at the University of Cambridge, University of Oslo, University of Cape Town, University of Pretoria, Bristol UWE, and University of Worcester (UK). He has held visiting fellowships at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Nordregio, and University of Mauritius.
His research has been funded by Horizon Europe, the Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and the Social Sciences (NOS-HS), Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Sweden), the Norwegian Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), Jisc (UK), the National Institute of Health Research (UK), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (US), the National Research Foundation (South Africa), the Tertiary Education Commission (Mauritius), the SAHEE Foundation (Switzerland) and the Cambridge Newton Trust.
He writes regularly for national and international media, such as Al Jazeera English, Boston Review, Foreign Affairs, Africa Is A Country, and Daily Maverick. He has been a guest speaker on South African national radio for SAfm, Cape Talk, Radio 702, and Voice of the Cape.
SCHOLARLY FOCUS
Vito is an anthropologist, media scholar, and political analyst with an interdisciplinary orientation. His approach is characterised by a systemic integration of ethnography, macro-level structural analysis, and epistemological & reflexive inquiry, in the tradition of “big ideas” social science and social theory.
His current work focuses digitalisation, new media, and communication, with interests in: political communication, digital propaganda, right-wing populism and digital democracy; social and organisational impact of digital technologies & AI; critical higher education studies; and green transition.
Vito has carried out field research in South Africa, Eswatini, UK, Norway and Italy. His early career was characterised by a specialism in southern and central Africa, which over the years has expanded into a focus on Europe, the Nordics, and North America.
His past work has focused extensively on political economy & ecology, specifically: global & regional development, industrialisation & green transitions; and global li-ion battery value and supply chains. He coordinated the Battery Justice Research Network (BATJUST), a global network of social scientists and sustainability scientists in five continents working on justice and transparency issues related to global li-ion battery value and supply chains.
His doctoral research in Cambridge (2005-2011) was an ethnography of timber workers in the Kingdom of Eswatini. He studied in a former asbestos mining town, redeveloped as a social enterprise by white southern African and North American Pentecostal Christian missionaries. For-profit economic activities in the forestry industry were carried out in tandem with orphan care services. The study was extended to the adjacent rural community. This work brings together political economy, political ecology and phenomenological anthropology.
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Special Issues and Special Sections by Vito Laterza
voices, they were met with brutal police violence. Customary Nationalism in Crisis offers
snapshots of life in the Kingdom leading up to and in the aftermath of this epic moment,
providing lessons to the world on the power of the government to shape our lives through
the guise of custom and tradition and the power of ordinary people to resist this.
Published by the Review of African Political Economy.
Available at https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/crea20/44/152
Editorial introduction is open access, you can download it here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03056244.2017.1345540
Anthropology Southern Africa, Vol. 36, Issue 3&4, December 2013
You can read and download the articles in this collection at http://thehumaneconomy.blogspot.com/2014/05/special-issue-human-economy-project.html