Post-Doctoral Researcher

Country : Lebanon
Theme : Agriculture, Environment
Brief : Cynthia Gharios is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Münster, German. Her research revolves around the topics of agriculture, the environment, technology, and the global agri-food system, adopting a political ecology perspective. She focuses particularly on the financialization of agriculture, land grabs and foreign direct investment, technology and smart farming, and the imaginary of agrarian future(s). Her research focuses on the MENA region. Her PhD research explores the intersection of environment and agricultural technology in the United Arab Emirates. She collaborated with Cornell University on a research project examining AgTech intermediaries in Memphis, USA. This project investigates how entrepreneurs, investors, and innovation intermediaries navigate competing imperatives of technological advancement and social impact. Previously, she examined the transformation of agrarian landscapes in South Lebanon, highlighting the link between long-term land access for farmers and the social, ecological, and spatial consequences of land-use change. She also contributed to studies on agricultural war damage in Yemen and on agricultural investment dynamics in Morocco. She holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Münster (Germany), MSc in Landscape Architecture and Planning with a specialisation in Cultural Geography from Wageningen University (the Netherlands), and a BSc in Landscape Design and Ecosystem Management (with the diploma of ingénieur agricole) from the American University of Beirut (Lebanon).