An embodied enquiry into alternative agriculture in Morocco and Switzerland (PhD of Andrea Mathez)

September 7, 2026
Presentation of the thesis at the public defence, Sept. 2026

What are those magic moments that make farmers practising alternative agricultures feel that they are doing the right thing? Perhaps it isn’t the headline ideological commitments, but instead little glimpses during the humdrum of daily life.  Andrea Mathez unravels these ideas, mixing ethnographic work in Morocco and Switzerland, philosophical considerations of hope, utopia, and enchantment, and embodied participatory engagements with goats, weeds, water and between farmers from the two places.

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Field studies in the High Atlas

November 29, 2016

We have just inaugurated a new field trip to Morocco with grand success for our masters program*. The idea is to give our masters students experience in “the field” before they head off for their independent fieldwork for their masters thesis. We sought to expose them to the pleasures and challenges of fieldwork that involves linguistic, cultural, and logistical barriers, and build their “soft skills”. To do so, we brought them to a cluster of villages perched on a mountain side in the High Atlas, and – during 4 days of intensive field surveys, interviews, muddy boots, and mint tea – learn what we could about how the villages manage their water, their waste, their cropfields, their pastures, and the touristic potential of the region.

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The villages of Annamer and Aguerd

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