Dr Brian Garvey
Reader
Work, Employment and Organisation
Personal statement
My current research investigates local and global tensions regarding labour, land use and commodification of natural resources. I have a particular interest in Scottish land reform, mineral prospecting in Ireland and the territorial demarcations and resistance by agrarian, traditional and indigenous communities in the Global South. I currently work closely with academics and civil society organisations in Scotland, Europe, Africa, Brazil and Latin America and share an ambition to challenge Eurocentric and colonial paradigms in our collective research. I am co-founder of the Centre for the Political Economy of Labour, which seeks to reflect this ambition in its praxis.
Area of Expertise
I favour and am experienced in participative and action research methodologies. I have consistently worked across disciplines, including sociology, environmental studies, geography, engineering and law, to place changes to work and labour in the context of new technologies, new sites of production and emerging commodity chains. I am regularly involved in creative group facilitation and worker representation beyond traditional academic practices.
Prize And Awards
- Nevile-Plowman Prize for best article 2023
- Recipient
- 7/2024
- Best doctoral presentation
- Recipient
- 2003
Publications
- The Global Pesticide Market : Value of Life and Exemption
- Garvey Brian, Bombardi Larissa Mies
- The Impact of Anthropogenic Activities on the Natural Environment and Societies during the Contemporary Period (2026) (2026)
- The contested borders of extractive frontiers : Crepori Forest and the Munduruku
- Garvey Brian, Owens Steven Robert, Torres Mauricio, Lima de Oliveira Deise Cristina, Alfinito Ana Carolina, Gravina Affonso Hugo, Loures Rosamaria, Baracho Wanderley Barbara Evelyn
- 34 (2026)
- Conservação como estratégia de exploração madeireira e extração de ouro da Floresta Crepori dos Munduruku
- Lima de Oliveira Deise Cristina, Garvey Brian, Baracho Wanderley Barbara Evelyn, Loures Rosamaria, Gravina Affonso Hugo, Owens Steven Robert
- DIREITOS HUMANOS NO BRASIL 2025 (2025) (2025)
- Radical research perspectives, network and collective : 20 years of CLS
- Holgate J, Martinez Lucio Miguel, Stephenson Carol, Stewart Paul, , Garvey Brian
- Capital and Class Vol 49, pp. 529-535 (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.1177/03098168251342943
- Contemporary enclosures and resistance : women in struggle in Ireland, Scotland and Brazilian Amazon
- Garvey Brian, Kaba Munduruku Maria Leusa, MacPhee Catherine, O’Kane Fidelma, Loures Rosamaria, Vecchione-Gonçalves Marcela
- Capital and Class Vol 49, pp. 637-652 (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.1177/03098168251353403
- Absolution of expropriation : dynamics of extractivism within protected areas in the Amazon
- Alfinito Ana, Garvey Brian, Torres Mauricio, Goldfarb Yamila, Gravina Affonso Hugo
- Latin American Perspectives Vol 52, pp. 30-50 (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X251367301
Teaching
At the Department of Work, Employment and Organisation, I teach on several undergraduate and MSc courses and focus on labour, migration, organisational strategies and collective resistance linked to globalised commodity chains and extractive industries. I have supervised PhD and post doctoral studies on south-south migration, pesticide harm, forestry and land reform, labour organisation and gender, and community repsonses to dispoessession and deindustrialisation. I welcome interest from potential PhD candidates on any of the broad themes of my research.
Professional Activities
- Universidade Estadual Julio De Mesquita Filho-UNESP
- Visiting researcher
- 28/7/2025
- Federal University of Goias
- Visiting researcher
- 23/7/2025
- Forum in the Forest
- Participant
- 20/2/2025
- Mining the Amazon
- Recipient
- 5/9/2024
- Reweaving the Wind
- Host
- 14/5/2024
- Extraction and appropriation
- Participant
- 8/5/2024
Projects
- Accelerating the protection of territory and rights in the Amazon
- Garvey, Brian (Principal Investigator) Owens, Steven Robert (Co-investigator) Torres, Mauricio (Co-investigator) Loures, Rosamaria (Co-investigator)
- This project addresses illegal gold mining and deforestation in Brazil’s Crepori National Forest and the territories of Munduruku and Montanha & Mangabal communities. Integrating geospatial data, legal timelines, and community narratives from previous field visits and recent workshops, we expose unlicensed operations on Indigenous lands: constitutionally prohibited yet aided by municipal-level licensing loopholes
- 01-Jan-2025 - 31-Jan-3026
- Conservation as an extractive industry? Timber, territory and the trouble with new regulations
- Garvey, Brian (Principal Investigator) Owens, Steven Robert (Co-investigator)
- The main aim of this project is to (i) map the existence of areas traditionally used and occupied by Amazonian indigenous and riverine communities in an area destined for commercial timber extraction; (ii) locate zones and corridors of illegal timber extraction beneath the forest canopy; and (iii), make this data available for the Brazilian Federal Public Ministry to inform legal procedures towards safeguarding traditional peoples.
- 08-Jan-2024 - 01-Jan-2025
- Climate change and the rise of precarious work among agriculture and construction workers in a small island developing state.
- Sambajee, Pratima (Academic) Garvey, Brian (Academic)
- Small island developing states (SIDS) are among the first and worst affected by climate change despite making a very small contribution to the overall global emissions that cause climate change.. For over 20 years, the World Health Organization (WHO) has played a key role in raising awareness of and implementing actions to manage the health risks of climate change, particularly global warming within SIDS (WHO, 2018) but the challenges remain. Risks can arise from direct exposures, indirect exposures and via economic and social disruptions (Smith et al., 2014). In this proposed research we focus on direct exposures to high atmospheric temperature extremes that are increasing in frequency and intensity in SIDS and are projected to continue along this trend (Hoegh-Guldberg, 2018). Specifically, we focus on Mauritius, an Indian Ocean-African SIDS, where there is an increasing trend of reported heat stress and heat-related injuries in the construction and agricultural sectors (ILO, 2019). We situate precarious work in the context of climate change, in this case extreme temperatures associated with global warming. We will examine climate change as a potential factor exacerbating experiences of precariousness among agriculture and construction workers, often migrants from global south countries like India, Nepal and Bangladesh. The study will collect evidence to (a) explore the relevance of climate change as a contributor and multiplier of precarity at work, and (b) produce occupational health policy-relevant evidence for workers in the two sectors. Both outcomes are timely for improving the climate change preparedness of relevant sectors in SIDS.
- 01-Jan-2023 - 30-Jan-2027
- The Unauthorised Biography of Globalised Commodity Chains
- Garvey, Brian (Principal Investigator) Torres, Mauricio (Co-investigator)
- Focusing on the Brazilian Amazon, this project explores how illicit labour and resource exploitation contribute to contemporary commodity trades as a system of global (dis)order.
- 01-Jan-2023 - 31-Jan-2025
- Accelerating protection of territory and rights in the Amazon
- Garvey, Brian (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2023 - 31-Jan-2028
- Jumping the fence: transgressing knowledge enclosures of the land-food-environment nexus
- Garvey, Brian (Principal Investigator) Combe, Malcolm (Co-investigator) Vecchione, Marcela (Co-investigator)
- This project explores social tensions and ecological implications of both incumbent agricultural monocultures and of the transition of land use towards large scale ‘green’ projects. By considering the inequitable access to land, political power, finance and technology that are often masked by ‘greening’ projects, the project brings creative and transformative methods derived from traditional communities of Brazil into dialogue with community and academic practitioners in Scotland and the Amazon region of Brazil. It does so to creatively investigate disruption to unjust but apparently ‘locked-in’ land use practices towards diversified land and agrifood systems that promise improved human and environmental health outcomes.
- 01-Jan-2023 - 29-Jan-2024
Contact
Dr
Brian
Garvey
Reader
Work, Employment and Organisation
Email: brian.garvey@strath.ac.uk
Tel: 548 3999