Research team
Expertise
I work at the intersection of critical heritage studies, environmental humanities, and research-creation, with a particular focus on water as heritage. I investigate how water and other elements shape more-than-human relations across time and space, and how memory, care, and power circulate through places marked by inequity, colonial continuity, and environmental precarity. Within this field, I have developed "elemental heritage" as a conceptual and methodological lens for rethinking heritage beyond the human: as a living negotiation between people, waters, and other entities, rather than a fixed inheritance to protect. My current project, ELEMENTAL (funded by the FWO), applies this lens to the subterranean aquifers of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, examining how the construction of the Maya Train intersects with local, Indigenous, and more-than-human narratives of resistance, care, and environmental justice. My broader research activities include: site-specific, affective and collaborative fieldwork, memory, and heritage in contexts of environmental and colonial precarity; the study of ecofeminist, posthumanist, and pluriversal approaches to heritage and environmental justice; and the development of practice-based and non-representational research formats — performative lectures, participatory cartographies, exhibitions, and publishing — as legitimate forms of scientific output alongside peer-reviewed writing. I hold a PhD in Conservation (Centre for Critical Heritage Studies, University of Gothenburg, 2023) and founded The Imaginary Agency (2011), an independent platform for situated research and diverse ways of knowing, through which I have co-organised public programmes and exhibitions in Mexico, Guatemala, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
Elemental heritage whirling around the confluence of multivocal, ecocentric narratives (ELEMENTAL)
Abstract
Carved through the limestone bedrock of southeast Mexico, subterranean rivers sustain fragile ecologies on which many lifeforms depend. These entangled aquifers are now under pressure from the construction of the Maya Train (Yucatec Maya: Tsíimin K'áak'; Spanish: Tren Maya) traversing the Yucatán Peninsula. "Elemental heritage whirling around the confluence of multivocal, ecocentric narratives" (ELEMENTAL) approaches these aquatic ecologies as relational infrastructures of memory, care, and resistance through which colonial-extractive histories and transformations flow. Amid freshwater depletion, infrastructural expansion, and multispecies disruption, ELEMENTAL explores how more-than-human modes of sensing, mapping, and ecocentric storytelling through water can permeate and pluralise modern heritage paradigms. Drawing on ecofeminist and pluriversal approaches, and co-labouring with environmental rights advocates, local communities, and artists, the project unfolds through relational, affective, and practice-based methodologies. Performative epistemic translations of site-based insights will be employed to reorient heritage imaginaries at a planetary scale. Bridging critical heritage and posthumanist perspectives with environmental justice, the research advances 'elemental heritage' as both conceptual lens and methodological framework—reimagining heritage as a living negotiation among humans, waters, and other entities, channelling epistemologies of relation.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Erkan Yonca
- Fellow: Driesse Moniek
Research team(s)
Funding
- FWO
Project type(s)
- Research Project
ELEMENTAL ELemental heritage: Exploring Multivocal Ecocentric Narratives and Temporalities through an Artistic Lens.
Abstract
ELEMENTAL investigates the impacts of constructing the 1554-kilometre-long Maya Train tracks [Yucatec Maya: Tsíimin K'áak; Spanish: Tren Maya], traversing Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. Currently under construction, this large-scale infrastructure affects a fragile geological system and forests that shelter freshwater sources on which many depend. This research aims to explore how official discourses projecting a future imaginary of progress and economic growth are contested by local communities, including other-than-humans, such as water bodies. In collaboration with civil society groups, this research will engage with narratives of resistance against extractivism, especially as expressed through art and cultural activism. Drawing on notions of 'the planetary' and polychronic temporalities, co-created mappings of inhabited past-present-future imaginaries will be employed to determine narratives of exploitation, environmental degradation and past broken worlds that inform current and emerging practices of multigenerational care and solidarity within the habitat of many—humans and nonhumans alike. Herewith, the project seeks to relate critical heritage and post-humanist perspectives to environmental justice. The project aims to present the concept of 'elemental heritage' as an approach for advocating affective methodologies that critique heritage paradigms perpetuating exploitative practices, while, at the same time, imagining ways beyond these paradigms.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Erkan Yonca
- Fellow: Driesse Moniek
Research team(s)
Funding
- BOF
Project type(s)
- Research Project