Mara Dicenta Vilker
Assistant Professor
Office:
Washington Hall 114
Email:
[[mdicentavilker]]
Website:
www.afternatures.com
Areas of Specialization:
Science & Technology Studies; Environmental Knowledges; Conservation; Race and Racialization; Multispecies ethnography; Feminist Epistemologies; Settler colonialism; Southern Cone
Background
With a background in Social Anthropology and Science & Technology Studies (STS), my ethnographic work explores scientific communities and institutions, as well as their collaborations with human and other-than-human communities. I am particularly interested in how technoscience reproduces, responds to, or seeks to repair racial, colonial, and military legacies. Within this broad focus, I have engaged in various ethnographic and historical projects, ranging from the medicalization and psychologization of obesity in Spain and the Netherlands to the eradication of “invasive species” in Tierra del Fuego, more-than-human alliances to resist gated communities’ encroachment in Buenos Aires’ wetlands, and the restoration of river herring and local ecological knowledges along the Rappahannock River.
My ongoing book project, tentatively titled Wounded Knowledges: Eradication and Repair in Southern Patagonia, follows researchers, trappers, and Indigenous People in their efforts to remove all beavers from Tierra del Fuego, at the southern tip of the Americas. Based on ethnographic research conducted while living at a research station in Ushuaia, I examine how histories of violence tied to colonialism, militarism, and extractivism haunt the rationale behind “invasive species” eradication, affecting how researchers learn to kill, justify the project, and attempt to repair more than just ecosystems. Ultimately, the book raises questions about interspecies and intergenerational justice.
I hold a joint appointment between Anthropology and the Institute for Integrative Conservation. I am interested in working with students and collaborators on ethnographic projects exploring topics such as decolonizing science & technology, environmental knowledges & ethics, multispecies justice, feminist methodologies, race and racialization, and Latin American studies. For more information, see Mara Dicenta’s CV.
Selected Publications
2024 "The Promise of Interspecies Desegregation: Allying with Capybaras against gated communities in Buenos Aires' Wetlands." Environment and Planning F: Philosophy, Theory, Models, Methods and Practice.
2024 “La política animal en los estudios CTS a través del proyecto tecno socio ambiental de los castores en Tierra del Fuego.” In Ciencia, Tecnología y Sociedad en América Latina. La Mirada de las Nuevas Generaciones, ed. by Fernando Herrera, Antonio Franco, Ronald Cancino, and Luciano Levin, 19-42. Quito: Escuela Politécnica Nacional.
2023 (with CB Anderson and JL Archibald). "How changing imaginaries of nature and tourism shape national protected area creation in Argentine Patagonia." In Tourism and Conservation-based Development in the Periphery - Lessons from Patagonia for a Rapidly Changing World, ed. by Trace Gale, Andrea Ednie, and Keith Bosak, 1-28. Springer.
2023 (with Ana Cecilia Gerrard). “Ecotourism, Infrastructures, and the Drama of Sovereignty on a Border Island.” The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 28: 298–309
2023 "The Violence of Gated Communities in Buenos Aires Wetlands," Edge Effects. https://edgeeffects.net/buenos-aires-wetlands/
2022 "White Animals: Racializing Sheep and Beavers in the Argentinian Tierra del Fuego." Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 18(2):308-329.
– Marcel Roche Award 2022, hon. men.
2022 “Coproducir (en) Diferencia: Éticas de Colaboración entre Científicos, Cazadores, y Especies Invasoras.” Redes: Rev. de Estudios Soc. de la Ciencia y la Tecn.
2021 (with Gonzalo Correa). "Worlding the End: Edging Extinction in the Castorcene." Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, 4(1).
2020 (with Jessica L. Archibald et al.) "The Relevance of Social Imaginaries to Understand and Manage Biological Invasions in Southern Patagonia." Biological Invasions 22(11): 3307-3323.
2020 Dicenta, Mara. "The Beavercene: Eradication and Settler-Colonialism in Tierra del Fuego," Environment & Society Portal, Arcadia (Spring 2020), no. 1. http://www.environmentandsociety.org/node/8973
2019 Dicenta, Mara. "The Abortion Green Tide as a Boundary Object: Beyond the Curse of the Left." Somatosphere. http://somatosphere.net/2019/the-abortion-green-scarf-as-a-boundary-object-beyond-the-curse-of-the-left.html/
Education
2020 PhD, Science & Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
2017 MS, Science & Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
2015 MS, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Free University Amsterdam
2015 MS, Sexology. Sexual Education and Counselling, University of Alcala
2013 MS, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Complutense University Madrid
2013 BA, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Complutense University Madrid
2010 BA, Social Work, National Distance Education University
Courses Taught
- ANTH 350 / CONS 401: Conservation Ethics
- ANTH 326 / CONS 410: Indigenous Voices in Conservation
- ANTH 352 / CONS 352: Environmental Anthropology
- ANTH 445 / 545: Ethnographic Methods
- SOCL 340 / CONS 440: The Plantationocene Campus
- ENSP 250: Environmental Voices from the Margins
