British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, COMPAS
@matthew_porges
Matthew Porges is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow. His current research and fieldwork explores the relationship between migration, activism, and political imagination in Central Europe and the Balkans.
Matthew completed a PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews in 2021. His doctoral research explored the political legacy of nomadic pastoralism in Mauritania and Western Sahara. During his PhD, he completed visiting fellowships at Harvard’s Department of Anthropology, Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre, and the Université de Nouakchott’s Laboratoire d’Études et de Recherches Historiques. Since 2014, Matthew has carried out fieldwork in Mauritania, Western Sahara, Algeria, and Morocco. His academic writing has appeared in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Current Anthropology, Nomadic Peoples, Democracy and Security, Conflict and Society, Forced Migration Review, L’Ouest Saharien, and elsewhere.
Before starting his PhD, Matthew worked for the non-profit diplomatic advisory firm Independent Diplomat in Brussels, Belgium. His reporting and essays have appeared in the London Review of Books, Los Angeles Review of Books, Jadaliyya, and elsewhere. In 2023, he was shortlisted for the Fitzcarraldo Editions/Mahler & LeWitt Studios Essay Prize for a book proposal based on his research in the Balkans.
