David Gilbert is an environmental anthropologist with a special interest in social movements, ecological change, and post-development theory.

David has published on topics ranging from critiques of capitalism to explorations of communities-in-mobilization as their landscapes and climates change.

His book with University of California Press was released in March 2024: Countering Dispossession, Reclaiming Land: A Social Movement Ethnography. His work has appeared in journals like Antipode, Journal of Peasant Studies, and the Society for Cultural Anthropology and been featured in the New York Times, Mother Jones, National Public Radio, Times of London, Guardian, and the BBC, among other outlets.

David has received a number of research grants from the National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, and National Geographic.

Starting in 2024, David will be a postdoctoral research fellow in the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He held previous positions as a Ciriacy Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California, Berkeley and lecturer at Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Stanford University.

He is active in protest movements across four continents, from Sumatra and Amazonia to Catalonia and California.