In times of climate crisis and ecological breakdown it becomes clearer than ever that we cannot ignore the interspecies interdependencies that sustain our co-existence and flourishing on this planet. Trained in both Social and Cultural Anthropology (MSc, cum laude, VU Amsterdam) as well as Latin American Studies (FU Berlin), my work zooms in onto the myriad ways in which human and more-than-human actors make up their daily lives in a network of relations.
In particular, I am interested in how power relations, (post-)colonial trajectories and extractive encounters shape human/more-than-human relations, the ontological frictions that such encounters can reveal and the pluriversal politics that this might enable. In my current doctoral research, I explore how everyday Shipibo-Konibo herbalism and human-plant collaborations become politicized and entangled with larger struggles for decolonization and Indigenous self-determination in the Eastern Peruvian Amazon. Here, I aim to trace the socioecological and sociopolitical processes that shape everyday herbalism and make it into a mode of onto-political negotiation and anti-colonialist resistance in response to an extractive-capitalist ayahuasca tourism industry.
Accordingly, my work is located at the intersections of Environmental Anthropology, posthumanist political ecology and political ontology. In addition, I maintain a strong interest in gender studies, feminist political ecology as well as in the spiritualization of ecology and “Green Religions” in the European context.
Last but not least, I am committed to decolonial critique which forms the basis of my research, writing and teaching.
