Giacomo Mantovan holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from EHESS in Paris and is a researcher at the Centre for Research in Anthropology (CRIA) at ISCTE-IUL in Lisbon. He is currently a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Nantes. He has been a visiting researcher at Stanford University and the University of Edinburgh, as well as a researcher at the International Institute for Asian Studies.

An anthropologist specialising in social conflicts and political activism, his research focuses on experiences of participation in armed and non-armed movements. His work explores life trajectories, the memory of conflicts, and narratives of defeat and exile. He also examines how institutions shape individuals and give rise to new social groups and political subjectivities through mechanisms of coercion, discipline and normalisation, as well as through collective narratives, nationalist imaginaries and moral frameworks.

After studying these questions in the context of the Sri Lankan civil war and the Tamil diaspora, his research has recently turned towards oceanic environments. His current project at the Institute for Advanced Study in Nantes, Edge of the Blue: Conflict, Ecologies, and the Making of Oceanic Worlds, examines environmental conflicts related to overfishing and forms of care for non-human living beings, exploring how marine environments contribute to the co-production of forms of activism and political engagement.