Dr Sophia Valle-Cornibert

I am a socio-cultural anthropologist by profession and a feminist by vocation. My research interests bring into conversation gender, art, culture, and ecology, with a decolonial intentionality in the context of Latin America. My Northern Bridge-funded PhD thesis focused on women’s everyday activism within the context of extractivism in the Atacama Desert, Chile. Nourished by practice and activism, my thesis explored various participatory methods, including oral histories, embodied biographies, critical mapping, and visual ethnography. One of the collaborative and reciprocal outcomes of the research was the co-creation of the short film ‘We Won’t Do Anything for You, We’ll Do It with You’, which follows women’s strategies of mobilisation promoting dignidad (dignity), and challenging the marginalising portrays of their bodies and territory.

While remaining passionate about the desert, I aim to continue creating and promoting knowledge about human-territory interactions in these contexts, contributing to the disruption of the often hostile and homogenous imaginaries that shape desert narratives.

I am currently a research fellow on the AHRC-funded project ‘DignArte Cimarrona’, a collaboration between Northumbria University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US), FLACSO (Ecuador), and Mujeres de Asfalto Collective (Black feminist community arts organisation based in Esmeraldas). This project focuses on using art-based methods to address racialised gender-based violence affecting Afro/Black women from Esmeraldas. With an emphasis on feminist decolonial and Black/Afro epistemologies, the research will use of participatory mapping, body mapping and photovoice, to develop creative, local and cultural appropriate strategies to tackle racialised GBV.