Publications:

2025 with Lucas Erlbacher, Catalina Renc and Stefan Schmalz: "Regulation of the Digital Physical Infrastructure in the EU, USA and China". Sub-study 2 from the research project: Who owns the critical digital physical infrastructure? University of Erfurt / Vienna Chamber of Labour. emedien.arbeiterkammer.at/viewer/image/AC17601687/

2025 with Stefan Schmalz (ed.): Globalisation in Decline? Economic Stagnation, Geopolitical Conflicts and Ecological Crisis. Special Issue, Critical Sociology 51(4). doi.org/10.1177/08969205251334983

2023: "All just collapse? A Proposal for the Application of the World Ecology Approach to Empirical Contemporary Research". In: Periphery, No. 167/168, pp. 324-345. doi.org/10.3224/peripherie.v42i2.05

2022: "An extractive bioeconomy? Phosphate mining, fertiliser commodity chains and alternative technologies". In: Sustainability Science 18, pp. 633-644. doi.org/10.1007/s11625-022-01234-8

2022 with Maria Backhouse: "World ecology". In: Fischer, Karin; Gerhard Hauck; Manuela Boatcă (eds.): Handbuch Entwicklungsforschung. Wiesbaden: Springer VS

2021: "Village teacher against dictator's daughter: The Peruvian power struggle". In: Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 7/2021, pp. 37-40.

2020: "The extractive basis of the bioeconomy. Synthetic fertilisers, peak phosphorus & alternative technologies". In: Periphery 159/160, pp. 284-307.

2019 with Stefan Schmalz: "Globalisation and inequality". In: Fischer, Karin; Margarethe Grandner (eds.): Global Inequality. On the connections between colonialism, labour relations and nature consumption. Vienna: Mandelbaum, pp. 192-211.

2017: "Greening the imperial mode of living? Socio-ecological (in)justice, electromobility and lithium mining in Argentina". In: Pichler, Melanie; Cornelia Staritz; Karin Küblböck; Christina Plank; Werner Raza; Fernando Ruiz Peyré (eds.): Fairness and Justice in Natural Resource Politics. New York: Routledge, pp. 164-180.

2015: "Secar la tierra para sacar litio? Conflictos socio-ambientales en la minería de litio". In: Nacif, Federico; Miguel Lacabana (eds.): El ABC del Litio Sudaméricano. Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, pp. 171-192

Lectures:

"The Extractive Economy of the Cloud", Conference: Contested digital capitalism: neo-feudalism, geopolitics and social conflict. 13-14 March 2025, Jena.

"Political Economy and the Politics of Phosphorus", 2nd Global Transdisciplinarity Conference: Integrating Horizontal & Vertical Transdisciplinarity. 26-30 June 2024, Mustafapaşa / Online.

"Towards a Political Economy of the Phosphate Industry - Ecology, Power and Inequalities in Fertiliser Commodity Chains", Werkstatt Transformations- und Nachhaltigkeitsforschung. 11-12 January 2024, Kassel.

"Peru unter Pedro Castillo: Der Ukraine Krieg als Brennglas der landesweite Agrar- und Ernährungskrise", Webinar of the Global South Studies Centre GSSC (University of Cologne) and the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung: Der Ukraine-Krieg und der Globale Süden: Politische Positionierungen und wirtschaftliche Auswirkungen. 6 December 2022. online.

"Neoliberale Wende und Washington Consensus", guest lecture:Ringvorlesung Entwicklungspolitik (University of Vienna). 30 March 2022, Vienna.

"Contesting the Bioeconomy's Bottleneck - Conflicts around Phosphate Mining and Trade in Piura, Peru",^7th Degrowth / ^16th ISEE conference: Building Alternative Livelihoods in times of Ecological and Political Crisis. 5-8 July 2021, Manchester / Online.

"Climate Change and Global Inequalities", Public Climate School Cologne, 28 November 2019, Cologne.

"Die extraktive Basis der Bioökonomie: Peak Phosphorus, Nährstoff-Recycling und agrar-mineralische Frontiers in Südamerika", Final Conference DFG Kolleg Postwachstumsgesellschaften / 2nd Regional Conference of the DGS: Great Transformation - Die Zukunft moderner Gesellschaften. 23-27 September 2019, Jena.

"The Political Ecology of Lithium Mining in Argentina from a Global Perspective", 1st Austrian Conference on International Resource Politics: Towards International Resource Fairness - Theories, Conflicts and Policies, 4-6 December 2014, Vienna.

Research and teaching:

Axel Anlauf is currently researching the materiality of digital infrastructures with a particular focus on resource consumption by data centres and its impact on social transformation processes. His dissertation, submitted in April 2025, analyses the mining of phosphate rock - a raw material for the production of chemical fertilisers - as a little-known, extractive basis of the global food system. In his research, he focuses on the historical dimensions of global inequality, as well as the ecological embedding of socio-ecological processes and their transformation. He combines macrosociological approaches with debates from critical geography, political ecology and political sociology.

Focal points

• International political economy
• Globalisation and deglobalisation
• Physical digital infrastructures
• Extractivism and material flows
• Agri-Food Studies
• Teaching: Social change in the digital society