Japhy Wilson is Lecturer in Human-Environment Interactions at Bangor University in Wales. His work concerns the transformation of socioecological reality under conditions of global capitalism in the context of the urban Anthropocene. He addresses this overarching theme through critical investigations of the extractive, infrastructural and agglomerating dimensions of planetary urbanization, and ethnographic explorations of the radical political possibilities that can emerge amidst the manifold violences, absurdities, and contradictions of this process.

He has conducted field research in Mexico, Uganda, Ghana, Ecuador and Peru. His theoretical and methodological influences include historical geographical materialism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, gonzo journalism, dissident surrealism, and psychogeography.

His current work focuses on the urbanization of the Peruvian Amazon in the case of Iquitos, the largest city in the world that cannot be accessed by road. An apparent anomaly amidst the ever more intensive intermeshing of infrastructural networks and operational landscapes that characterizes planetary urbanization, Iquitos is interpreted as the capital of the Anthropocene.

His books include Reality of Dreams: Post-Neoliberal Utopias in the Ecuadorian Amazon (Yale 2021), and Extractivism and Universality: Inside an Uprising in the Amazon (Routledge 2023). He has published numerous articles in fields including human geography, urban studies and development studies. He received the Urban Studies Best Article Award 2023 for his paper “Apocalyptic urban surrealism in the city at the end of the world.”