Axel Prestes Dürrnagel

About

Axel Prestes Dürrnagel holds a postdoctoral position with the Research Group Human Geography at the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU). From 2019 to 2024, he worked as a research assistant and PhD candidate with the Chair of Social and Population Geography at the University of Bayreuth. In his doctoral research, he investigated peri-urban life-worlds and conflict dynamics at the rural-urban interface of Maputo, Mozambique, where he conducted several months of ethnographic field research.

Prestes Dürrnagel’s research and teaching interests focus on human-environment interactions, (peri-)urban governance, land conflicts, and socio-spatial displacement processes, which he investigates from the perspectives of life-world phenomenology and political ecology. His regional foci are on South America (especially Brazil), Southern Africa (especially Mozambique), and Southern Germany, using qualitative ethnographic and participatory methods.