Alf Gunvald Nilsen

Image rights: Alf Gunvald Nilsen

Dr. Alf Gunvald Nilsen is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Sociology, University of Bergen. Alf has spent the last ten years researching the role of social movements in shaping the political economy of development, with particular focus on struggles against dispossession and for democratization of state-society relationships in India.

He is the author of the book "Dispossession and Resistance in India: The River and the Rage" (Routledge: 2010) - a comprehensive analysis of the anti-dam struggle in the Narmada Valley, and the co-editor of "Social Movements in the Global South: Dispossession, Development and Resistance" (Palgrave: 2011). He is currently involved in a research project that investigates how local social movements have struggled to democratize state-society relations in Adivasi communities in western Madhya Pradesh, as well as co-editing a volume on Marxist theory and social movements (forthcoming with Brill). An independent Marxist, Alf has been active with various leftist groups over the years, and has most recently contributed actively to the campaign against the silencing of the whistleblower Dr. Rod Thornton at the University of Nottingham. You can sample Alf’s work here.