More-than-Human Histories of Rural Landscapes in the Andes, 19th-20th century

HI-LANDeS develops a conceptually innovative and empirically grounded historicising approach to the transformation and governance of rural landscapes.

In the face of planetary-wide anthropogenic change, new knowledge and methods are required to better grasp how human and nonhuman lives co-produce socio-environmental transformations through “more-than-human” histories.

Strategic sites for carbon storage, water sources, and biodiversity, as well as home to resilient indigenous communities, Andean wetlands offer a unique case-study to examine “more-than-human” landscape histories, and how these can inform contemporary socio-environmental challenges.

The main objective of HI-LANDeS is to construct and apply an analytical framework that integrates a historicising, systemic, and more-than-human perspective on rural landscapes to investigate the role of communal practices and knowledge production around water and land in the transformation and governance of rural landscapes.

HI-LANDeS departs from two case studies in indigenous communities of the Bolivian-Chilean highlands, based on archival research, fieldwork, and community workshops, analysed within a global framework and a transdisciplinary collaboration.

HI-LANDeS will produce new empirical knowledge, critical theoretical insights, and innovative co-creational methods that can contribute to more inclusive conservation and rural development policies, in the Andes, Europe but also more globally.

This global fellowship facilitates a three-way transfer of knowledge between expertise in rural history, world-ecology, and rural development at UGent (Belgium), a strong tradition in Andean historical anthropology at UTA (Chile), and the fellow’s trajectory in environmental humanities.

Through an intersectoral secondment at NGO Agua Sustentable (Bolivia), the fellow will enable a knowledge transfer between historical research and environmental governance.