
Olaf Kaltmeier is professor of Ibero-American history at Bielefeld University and director of CALAS - Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies in Social Sciences and Humanities, founding director of CIAS - Center for InterAmerican Studies at Bielefeld University, and spokesman for the Volkswagen Foundation's "Turning Land into Capital" project. He holds a doctorate in sociology and humanities from the University of Münster. His research interests focus on social movements, indigeneity, state formation, social and cultural inequalities, environmental history in the Southern Cone and the Andes.