I am Tijo Salverda, a Dutch anthropologist with a strong motivation to better understand, and contribute to, the shaping of a fairer and ecologically friendlier world. Of particular relevance to this is my more than fifteen years of experience with studying how elite, corporate and financial actors balance various moral, economic and sustainability concerns. Equally of importance to my analyses are the workings of counter-power, geopolitics, political economy, as well as interpretations of economic behaviour from an anthropological perspective. I have conducted previous and ongoing research in sites across Mauritius, Zambia, South Africa, the Netherlands, France, the UK, Norway, Germany, and Austria.
Next to working as a kitchen chef, I began my studies in World History, Non-Western History, at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Subsequently, I commenced a Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the VU University Amsterdam (which I defended in 2010). After teaching at various Dutch universities, I participated in the Human Economy Programme at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, from 2012 to 2014. Upon return to Europe, I joined the University of Cologne’s Global South Studies Center from 2014 through 2019. From early 2019 to 2022, I worked as a (fixed-term) Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna’s Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology. For the 2023-2024 period, I was appointed as guest professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg’s MA programme Standards of Decision-Making Across Cultures In addition, I am a certified expert in sustainable finance (Frankfurt School of Finance and Management) and participated in the course 'Business Sustainability Management' (Institute for Sustainability Leadership, University of Cambridge).