Penelope Harvey

Penelope Harvey is a Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester and held the position of Professor II at the University of Oslo from 2012 to 2019. She earned her PhD in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics in 1987. Her research focuses on materiality, infrastructure, and the intersections of technology, politics, and culture, with regional expertise in South America and Europe. Her work contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goals related to climate action and sustainable cities.

Research interests include language politics, gender studies, visual anthropology, and the anthropology of technology. She has conducted fieldwork in the Peruvian Andes and Spain, exploring topics such as ambiguity, uncertainty, and the politics of expertise in infrastructural projects. She co-led the 'The Age of Infrastructure: China as a Global Urban Agent' research project (2019–2020).

Her recent publications examine nuclear waste containment, political violence, and environmental infrastructural alterities. She has supervised 29 research works and is affiliated with the Digital Futures and Dalton Nuclear Institute research platforms.