Raúl Acosta García

Raúl Acosta García is a social anthropologist and researcher at the Institute of Ethnology, Department of Social Sciences, Goethe University Frankfurt. He is currently working on the NoJoke ERC-funded project focusing on humor and politics. Previously, he held research positions at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (2019-2022) and University of Konstanz (2014-2018). He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford and completed his habilitation at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 2023.

• Education: DPhil in Social Anthropology from University of Oxford; Habilitation from LMU Munich (2023)
• Previous Positions: Project Manager at LMU Munich (2019-2022); Principal Investigator at University of Konstanz (2015-2018)

Acosta García's research focuses on political anthropology, urban anthropology, and environmental studies, with particular emphasis on Latin America (especially Mexico and Brazil). His work explores the intersections of politics, humor, urban infrastructure, and environmental governance. He has published extensively on topics including technomoral governance, urban mobility, cycloactivism, and multispecies entanglements in urban settings.

His recent publications reveal a strong focus on how moral imperatives intertwine with technological solutions in contemporary governance (technomoral governance), particularly in urban contexts. He examines how microscopic elements (technomolecular flows) affect coastal cities, how river restoration serves as urban experimentation, and how cycling activism challenges existing power structures in Mexico City through bodily experiences. His work bridges anthropology, urban studies, and environmental science to address pressing issues of urban inequality, environmental justice, and democratic participation.

• Editorial Board Member: Roadsides journal
• Co-leader: DGSKA working group for urban anthropology
• Author: Urban Ethics as Research Agenda (2023), Civil Becomings (2020)

His research contributes to multidisciplinary debates on urban ethics, examining how ethical narratives are used to mobilize and contest urban development in terms of the 'good life.' Through fieldwork in Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Venezuela, and Peru, he investigates how urban residents form environmental subjectivities and how cities are reimagined as ecosystems within the Anthropocene context.