Biography
My PhD research focuses on human-plant-spirit relationships through time and ethnobotanical taxonomic classification among Kukama Indigenous women in the northern Amazon region of Peru. In combining historical ecology and ethnobotanical methods, I consider the possibility that interspecies relationships, as experienced in ontological praxis, are integral to the epistemological classification of plants, particularly palm trees, in ethnobotanical knowledge systems. I hope to advance a holistic understanding of plants’ cultural value, thus contributing to a transformative bottom-up approach to sustainable and collaborative conservation of biocultural diversity.
Prior to my PhD, I completed an interdisciplinary MSc in Ethnobotany (2023) at the University of Kent at Canterbury during which I conducted fieldwork on cultural transmission in northeastern Peruvian Amazonia. I also hold a BA in Social Anthropology (2022) from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
