I read Economics in Madrid and worked for a couple of years as an economic analyst there and in London before switching to anthropology. In 1996 I completed an MSc in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics and moved to Oxford to do my D.Phil. (2001), which involved two years of fieldwork (1997-1999) in Antofagasta, a mining town in the Atacama Desert, Chile. The ethnography that ensued explored the relationship between the imagination of the desert and the city's social life. The theoretical thrust of that work engaged with questions of political economy and urban space and led to a critique of anthropological analyses of place and landscape.

Between 2001 and 2003, I held a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at St Hugh's College, Oxford, and did another 6 months of fieldwork in Chile, this time between Antofagasta and Maria Elena (a desert mining community). At St Hugh's I was also College Tutor in Social Anthropology.

In September 2003 I joined the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester, where I was also a member of the Executive Committee of the Cultural Theory Institute.

From 2004-2007 I was Media and Public Relations Officer at the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and the Commonwealth (www.theasa.org) and between 2004-2006 I was Book Reviews Editor for Critique of Anthropology.

In January 2009 I was appointed Dean at Spain's School for Industrial Organisation and as of June 2009 I am a Senior Scientist at Spain's National Research Council (CSIC).