Matthew Furlong

Matthew Furlong,

Matthew Furlong (he/him) is a Social Science Teaching Fellow at the Pozen Center. Why has public housing in Latin America radically expanded during the past half-century, while public housing in North Atlantic nations like the U.S. has fallen radically from favor? This unanswered geopolitical question is at the heart of Matthew's research agenda. As an urban anthropologist whose concerns extend into land struggle history, space-making in Mexican social movements, and the anthropology of the state, Matthew's research draws these concerns together through urban planning archives and ethnographic fieldwork amongst northern Mexican construction companies and residents. Set in the shadow of Latin America's largest national mass housing industry, Matthew's book manuscript, A Politics of Invasion: Housing Struggles in the Twilight of a Mexican Infrastructure-Building State (in preparation), explores how public housing has served both to foreclose and project the power of indigenous/peasant land struggle movements in Mexico, while projecting competing images of Mexico--to domestic and global audiences--as neoliberal or socialist, respectively. Matthew has taught Latin American studies as a lecturer at Roosevelt University and served as an advisor to Espacio Migrante, a Tijuana-based migrant autonomy-oriented NGO. At the University of Chicago, he has also taught courses on de/colonization in the Americas, social theory, and the relationship of anthropology and human rights. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 2021.