Knowledge, Struggles and Transformations in Latin America: Inaugural Conference on Social Science and Humanities Perspectives on Latin America

KEYNOTE LECTURE

Research about and in Latin America is deeply rooted in colonial power. This power is evident in how epistemic extractivism is deployed in research through a process which objectifies, instrumentalises and exploits the politics, struggles and knowledges of the Global South (Cusicanqui 2010; Grosfoguel 2016). In dialogue with Colombian women social leaders’ desires, Laura Rodriguez Castro reflects on doing research differently so as to centre geopolitical commitments and epistemic questioning. Based on these reflections, she opens a dialogue on how Australian-Latin American research can be imagined from the epistemic power of Southern places.

Dr Laura Rodriguez Castro is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute of Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University and the Membership Secretary for the Association of Iberian and Latin America Studies of Australasia. Her research focuses on decolonial feminisms, critical heritage, memory and rurality. She is also interested in arts, visual and participatory methodologies including methods such as zine-making, photo-elicitation and co-curating photographic exhibitions. Laura’s book with Palgrave Decolonial Feminisms, Power and Place: Sentipensando with Rural Women in Colombia (2021) explores how rural women enact and imagine decolonial feminist worlds. Her most recent project ‘Fostering South-South Dialogues on difficult memories between Australia and Latin America’ seeks to foster dialogues among Australia and Latin America on memory-making from the ‘Southern’ perspectives of Latin American post-conflict migrants, artists, activists and scholars.

In 2019 she was awarded the Australian Academy of the Humanities Travelling Fellowship for a project entitled ‘Advancing Peace and Conflict Studies from The Ground: Women’s Oral Testimonies and Historical Memory in Colombia’, from which she has published in the International Journal of Heritage Studies and in Museum Management and Curatorship. In 2020, she co-organised the workshop ‘Geography and Collective Memories Through Art’, which brought together scholars, activists and artists from Colombia and Australia. More recently, she explored the dialogic potential of memory-work from Southern places through the seminar ‘The Colombian Peace Process: Truth-telling in Times of Continuing Conflict’ as part of the ‘Decolonising Truth Globally’ seminar series led by Dr Vanessa Barolsky and supported by ADI and the Institute for Postcolonial Studies. Recent publications also include a journal article entitled‘ ‘We are not poor things’: territorio cuerpo-tierra and Colombian women’s organised struggles’ in Feminist Theory’s Special Issue On Coloniality. 

Sponsored by the the Australian National University’s Australian National Centre for Latin American Studies (ANCLAS), the Latin American Students Association (LASA) and the ANU Gender Institute