I am a researcher and educator interested in the relationships between people, nature, and power. I serve as an Assistant Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University (ASU).

My work focuses on natural resource use, conflict, and governance, as well as more broadly on the intersection of environmental change and social inequality. My current research examines the multi-scalar politics of resource extraction in Indonesia. I am particularly interested in small-scale gold mining, energy transition minerals, and the relationships between mining and local communities.

I ground my research in political ecology, an interdisciplinary field that combines historical, political-economic, and cultural analysis with appreciation for the agency of nature. I draw on training in environmental social science that spans human geography, anthropology, critical development studies, Southeast Asian studies, and environmental justice.

My teaching covers topics in environment, development, and international politics. I have recently taught courses such as “Global Environmental Politics,” “Uneven Environments: Nature, Power, and Inequality,” and “Principles of Global Studies.” I ground my teaching in a pedagogy that emphasizes collaborative, student-to-student learning and case-based exploration of topics. I draw on experience teaching at ASU, Rutgers, UC Berkeley, and two universities in Indonesia.

Before arriving at ASU, I served as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellow with USAID’s Land and Resource Governance team. Previously, I completed a postdoc at Rutgers University’s Center for Cultural Analysis, where I worked on the theme of “the Commons.” I completed my PhD in Society and Environment at UC Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management.

My research has been awarded funding by the Fulbright Program, the American Institute for Indonesian Studies (AIFIS), and UC Berkeley’s Institute of International Studies, among others.

Research

My research interests are oriented around three interrelated themes:

Political Ecology of Global Resource Extraction

How should we understand the distinctly uneven social and environmental effects of resource extraction? How is the international financing, sourcing, and exchange of minerals and fuels experienced in the sites where these resources are derived? And how is authority enacted and contested over nature, space, and human populations in the process?

Small-Scale Mining and Other Resource-Based Livelihoods

How do we explain the rapid, worldwide growth of artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) activities? What are the everyday challenges and opportunities of small-scale mining life and how do they differ among its diverse participants? How are management interventions—often aimed at reform or pollution reduction—experienced by miners and how might they be improved? More generally, how are people on the margins of the global economy finding new ways of making livelihoods from nature?

Cultural Politics of the Environment in Southeast Asia

How do individuals and communities relate to land, nature, and resources in particular ways? In environmental conflicts, how do struggles over resources encapsulate struggles over meaning? How are these meanings informed by broader histories, embedded in social practices, and mobilized in narratives?

Publications

2026     Libassi, M., Cheap nickel: Materiality and socio‐technical reorganization on Indonesia’s energy transition mineral frontier. Antipode, 58(2), e70151. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.70151

Abstract: Guided by government strategy, Indonesia has rapidly become the world's largest producer of nickel, a key mineral used in electric vehicle batteries. But this growth is not due to savvy industrial policy alone. I argue that Indonesia has revolutionized its production, and thereby expanded the commodity frontier, through a new metabolism of nickel. This new metabolism is predicated on the particular materialities of Indonesia's nickel deposits, high-intensity processing technologies, and a spatial constellation of mines and industrial parks. Paradoxically, it has brought Indonesia's low-grade nickel—previously considered unprofitable—to market at the world's lowest prices. I show how this transformation has been built on cheap nature, producing cheap nickel with significant socio-ecological costs. The case of Indonesian nickel illustrates how the push for energy transition minerals entails more than just new mining frontiers; it is also a frontier in the metabolism of earth into metal.

2025     Libassi, M., Mineral intensive: Digging for batteries and the case of Indonesian nickel. Environment and Society, 16(1), pp. 90-111. https://doi.org/10.3167/ares.2025.160106

Abstract: Dominant discourses assert that the energy transition will be mineral intensive and will therefore require more mining. This article reviews how scholars have analyzed the politics and socio-ecological consequences of the push for transition minerals through concepts such as green extractivism. It advances this literature by examining scholar and activist accounts from Indonesia, the world's largest producer of nickel. Counter to themes of North–South exploitation in the academic literature, Indonesian politicians frame the “downstreaming” of the country's nickel sector as a break from colonial patterns of raw material export. Local critics, however, refute this narrative by documenting concrete mechanisms—new configurations of state control, transnational capital, corruption, and socio-ecological harm—that produce deeply uneven outcomes within Indonesia. These insights underscore the need to examine subnational dynamics of transition mineral extraction while extending scholarship on how green extractivism operates through locally situated narratives, forms of coloniality, and processes of accumulation.

2024     Libassi, M., Gold conflict and contested conduct: Large- and small-scale mining subjectivities in Indonesia. Geoforum. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.10.005

Abstract: Resource extraction shapes the people who live and work in its midst. In Pongkor, Indonesia, these transformations revolve around long-running tensions between large- and small-scale gold miners. The region is home to a state-owned industrial mine as well as thousands of unlicensed, small-scale miners. These actors have competed over the same gold deposits, and who has the authority to mine them, for more than three decades. In this article, I examine how this resource conflict informs multiple, co-constitutive extractive subjectivities in Pongkor. I expand upon existing analyses of resource governance, extractive development, and environmental conflict by examining the multi-directional, interrelated processes of subject formation entailed in asserting claims to resources. Drawing on ethnographic research, I frame the situation in Pongkor as a territorial conflict with three competing subject formation processes at its core. First, the mining company has attempted to end small-scale mining by reconstituting local people as more amenable development subjects. It emphasizes particular nationalistic, economic, and moral values through both disciplinary and community development programs. Second, small-scale miners have responded by cultivating political subjectivities grounded in a collective “community miner” identity. Community miners go beyond simply participating in gold-based livelihoods; they learn to argue for rights to local resources. Third, the mining company has pursued internal reforms aimed at remaking itself and its employees. Using small-scale miners as a foil, company leaders work to reposition their operations as a model of clean and green development. In tracing these processes, I complicate narratives of industrial extractive dominance and community resistance by demonstrating that subjects inside and outside of mining operations are co-constituted. I call for further research on the shaping of varied subject positions—including corporate mining employees, small-scale miners, and local residents—involved in extractive conflicts.

2023     Libassi, M., Uneven ores: gold mining materialities and classes of labor in Indonesia. Journal of Rural Studies, 98, pp. 101-113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2023.01.013

Abstract: Behind farming, small-scale mining is one of the most important sources of rural livelihoods in the Global South. A significant body of research has detailed the interlinkages between these activities. More recently, scholars have used the tools of agrarian change to interpret small-scale mining livelihood dynamics. I build on this trend by introducing an emphasis on the materiality of mining. As with small farmers, small-scale miners’ livelihoods depend directly on the land—its material qualities are a prime factor in their choices, successes, and failures. Extending this comparison, I consider how the nature of gold ore shapes small-scale mining labor practices, dynamics, and outcomes. To do so, I examine small-scale gold mining in the Pongkor region of West Java, Indonesia. In Pongkor, an array of people with diverse social positionings participate in mining using different techniques and at different scales. I connect this diversity to the variable characteristics of the ore they mine, including the quality of the ore, the depth where it is found, and the methods required to process its various forms. I argue that these multiple materialities have made small-scale mining both a flexible and an unequal livelihood. The particularities of gold's occurrence enable it to support many people, but simultaneously structure inequalities into small-scale gold production. The interplay of these material conditions and broader political-economic dynamics has ultimately resulted in the differentiation of various “classes of labor.” Like farming, small-scale mining is thus experienced, and incorporated into broader commodity exchange, unevenly.

2022     Libassi, M., Contested subterranean territory: Gold mining and competing claims to Indonesia’s underground. Political Geography, 98, 102675. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102675

Abstract: Worldwide, subsurface resources are typically the domain of the state. Their cataloguing and government-permitted extraction comprise key elements of state territorialization of the subterranean. However, like processes of territorialization aboveground, state control of the underground is always incomplete and subject to competing uses of space and resources. One of the clearest examples of this contestation is unlicensed small-scale mining. In this article, I examine a case of gold mining conflict in the Pongkor region of West Java, Indonesia. There, state-corporate and small-scale mining compete over the same gold reserves, directly confronting each other both above and below ground. Drawing on twelve months of ethnographic research, I analyze three ways that state-corporate and small-scale mining vie for control of these subterranean territories: regulating movement between the surface and subsurface, managing underground volumes, and deploying competing geological knowledges. I argue that verticality, volume, and the material and discursive features of the underground do not merely set the conditions for this conflict, but are also dynamics utilized to territorialize underground space. I call for further scholarly inquiry into contemporary, ongoing processes of subterranean territorial contestation and reproduction.

2021     Verbrugge, B., Lanzano, C., Libassi, M., The cyanide revolution: Efficiency gains and exclusion in artisanal- and small-scale gold mining. Geoforum, 126, pp. 267-276. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.07.030

Abstract: Since its advent at the end of the nineteenth century, cyanide processing facilitated the intensification and global expansion of industrial gold mining. Today, there are important indications that artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is on the verge of a similar cyanide revolution: while ASGM is typically associated with mercury-based processing, mercury amalgamation is increasingly replaced with, or complemented by, cyanidation. Relying on evidence from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Burkina Faso, we demonstrate how this transition is having a deeply transformative impact on ASGM communities. On the one hand, cyanidation produces clear efficiency gains. Together with rising gold prices, it is fueling a dramatic expansion of ASGM by enabling the profitable extraction of lower-grade gold deposits. On the other hand, it contributes to the emergence of new and often highly unequal labor and revenue-sharing arrangements. More broadly, these findings demonstrate the highly uneven impact of socio-technical transformations. Consequently, the growing number of efforts to intervene in the technological make-up of ASGM, usually in the name of efficiency and sustainability, should be wary of having unintended consequences.

2020    Libassi, M., Mining heterogeneity: Diverse labor arrangements in an Indonesian informal gold economy. Extractive Industries and Society, 7(3), pp. 1036-1045. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2020.06.015

Abstract: Small-scale mining involves extremely heterogeneous labor arrangements. While previous research has highlighted differences between mining contexts, relatively few scholars have focused on the diverse forms of labor that constitute individual mining localities. Fewer still have analyzed the consequences that emerge from these varied arrangements. In response, this article offers a close examination of small-scale mining labor in the Pongkor gold mining region of West Java, Indonesia. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and concepts from agrarian political economy, I argue that heterogeneous labor arrangements critically shape the local informal gold economy as well as participants’ experiences within it. First, I outline the various labor roles, configurations, and relations involved in informal gold production in Pongkor. I then analyze how this diversity has helped expand livelihoods and gold extraction, but simultaneously produced inequalities. Particular positionings within the production process cohere with different opportunities, constraints, and risks, ultimately leading to trends of socioeconomic differentiation. Scholars and policymakers must consider the dynamics of informal mining's internal heterogeneity to avoid reinforcing these inequalities.

Further information can be found at my ResearchGate page.