Felix Mantz

Background

After growing up in different parts of Germany, my interest in politics was ignited during my undergraduate studies when I was trained to study the modern international order and its global political economy from Third World, anti-colonial, and Indigenous perspectives. Concerned with the converging crises afflicting the international order as well as the different forms of injustice and violence they produce, I went on to complete my graduate studies at King’s College London and Queen Mary University of London in the UK. I also researched and taught at SOAS University of London, the Free University of Brighton, and California State University San Marcos before joining UH Mānoa.

Education

• PhD, Political Science, Queen Mary University of London, 2023
• MRes, International Relations, Queen Mary University of London, 2019
• MA, International Political Economy, King’s College London, 2018
• BA, Critical Global Studies, Westminster University, 2017

Courses

• POLS 110: Introduction to Political Science
• POLS 380: Environmental Law & Politics

Research

My research is interdisciplinary, spanning across International Political Economy, Environmental Politics, Anti/Decolonial Studies, Political Geography, and Development Studies. I specifically work on the myriad ways in which the global political economy, planetary environmental crises, and colonial structures of power are entangled. Drawing on a range of critical theories, especially anti/decolonial, anarchist, and Indigenous thought, I am particularly interested in questions of land, autonomy, food systems, and extractivism. My teaching and research are based on a commitment to challenge unjust systems of power and, as the Zapatistas would put it, recover, (re)build, and defend a world in which many worlds fit. Most of my work has a regional focus on East Africa and Mesoamerica.

Community Engagement

Since 2021, I have been involved with the Free University of Brighton (UK), a moneyless, autonomous learning space that seeks to make higher education free and accessible to everyone.