Matthew Libassi is a doctoral candidate in the department of Environment Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. He arrived in Indonesia in October 2017 to begin his research under the US Fulbright Student Research grant entitled “The History and Development of Small-scale Gold Mining Institutions in Indonesia.” Matt’s research explores the structure and socio-cultural context of the informal small-scale gold mining economy in West Java. He hopes to provide greater clarity about the norms of this industry—which is often perceived as shadowy and chaotic—to enable more finely attuned policies and further scholarship on informal resource access and use.

This research is supported through an affiliation with the Anthropology department at Universitas Indonesia.