CASAS is a community of scholar-activists from the Global South working in agrarian studies. It is a network emerging from the 2019 Journal of Peasant Studies Writeshop on Critical Agrarian Studies and Scholar-Activism in Beijing. It has expanded through subsequent editions, and it is self-organised by Writeshop participants.
CASAS promotes scholarship and activism in critical agrarian studies and alternative ways of navigating the structural barriers in academia by following principles of solidarity and mutual care.

Amrita Sharma is an Associate Professor at O P Jindal Global University in Haryana, India. She teaches political studies and works across political economy, political anthropology, political ecology, critical agrarian studies, and political geography. Her research examines the everyday politics of conflicts, resistance, and social movements, with a sustained focus on sovereignty, development, extractivism, nationalism,…
Michelle Escobar Cruz is an economist, holding a Master of Science in Rural Development, and she is a PhD candidate in Sustainability Science. Michelle was raised by her afrodescendant grandmother in a village in Chiapas, México, where her great-grandmother was a traditional doctor supporting well-being and health of many community members. From there, Michelle’s curiosity…
CASAS’ member Faustina Obeng and Sietze Vellema have published “Persistent indebtedness in the global cocoa chain” in The Journal of Peasant Studies. This paper critically examines the conditions and practices that produce and reproduce relations of lending and borrowing and consequently indebtedness, which are closely…
CASAS’ member Yamikani Harry Makwinja has published this article with Patrick John O’Farrell, Jude Ndzifon Kimengsi and Edeltraud Guenther in the journal Land Use Policy. Abstract: Local communities are widely blamed for the increasing deforestation in Malawi, primarily due to agricultural expansion and the increased…