Livio Miles Silva Muller

Livio Miles Silva Muller is a Research Fellow at Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Department of Sociology, affiliated with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Previously a PhD candidate at the Geneva Graduate Institute, he now conducts research on the intersection of environmental, transnational, and economic sociologies with focus on the Global South.

His research examines how states, markets, and international organizations confront challenges of decarbonization, redistribution, and democracy, particularly investigating how transnational finance, institutional structures, and economic elites enable and constrain state capacity. Methodologically, he employs mixed-methods approaches including qualitative interviews, quantitative surveys, and computational techniques such as text-as-data analysis and web scraping.

Dr. Muller's primary projects include 'The Amazon as a Global Carbon Sink,' which analyzes environmental state-building processes in Brazil from 1985 to 2024, and collaborative research on 'Fear and Trust in Unequal Democracies: Elites and the Politics of Redistribution in the Global South' funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

• American Sociological Association award
• Latin American Studies Association award
• Environmental Sociology Student Paper award (for 'Pathways of the Environmental State')

His research has received substantial funding from the Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS), the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research, and Innovation (SERI), and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF). Fluent in English, French, German, and Portuguese, Dr. Muller maintains active scholarly engagement through the Critical Political Economy Research Network (CPERN) and other academic communities.