beyond borders

situated knowledges in times of climate collapse

As part of the MATCH project, this round table shifts the usual perspective on climate migration, understood as a mere consequence of environmental collapse. Instead of addressing it as an effect of crises—heat waves, fires, floods, or extreme storms—it also proposes recognising it as a source of situated knowledge capable of transforming the way we imagine and practise people's adaptation to their territories, in both urban and rural contexts.

We will be joined by Panagiota Kotsila, coordinator of IMBRACE project (UAB), which analyses how the knowledge and experiences of migrants can contribute to fairer forms of climate adaptation in different European cities. From an artistic perspective, Rae Teitelbaum explores ways of life, care and resilience in rural queer communities in Spain and Portugal. And Josep Perelló, who leads OpenSystemsUB, a multidisciplinary research group at the University of Barcelona that drives research projects based on citizen participation and artistic practices. One of their recent projects is Crónicas del calor, which, using social citizen science, analyzes how periods of high temperatures affect different population groups.  

This dialogue aims to open up a space for reflection on how migrant experiences, participatory methodologies and community art practices can influence scientific production, the design of climate policies that are more sensitive to territorial and social diversity, and the strengthening of collective resilience in the face of the climate crisis.

Moderated by Camila Opazo Sepúlveda

bios

Panagiota Kotsila is a senior researcher at ICTA-UAB and the PI of the 5-year ERC-CoG project (IMBRACE) which looks at what shapes immigrants’ climate health vulnerability (related to extreme heat, storms and flooding, and vector-borne disease) and how situated knowledges inform both their own response capacities and urban climate adaptation more broadly, towards more effective and just approaches. She is a biologist by training, with a Joint Master’s degree on Environmental Studies (Universidade de Aveiro, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), and a PhD in Development Studies from the University of Bonn (ZEF-Center for development Studies).

Josep Perelló Palou is a professor of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Barcelona. In 2012, he created OpenSystems, a research group that conceives scientific research based on citizen participation and artistic practices, which falls under the broad label of Social Citizen Science. Its main objective is to analyse human behaviour in urban contexts through the sciences of complexity and within the field of computational social science. With the aim of providing a collective response to specific social concerns, OpenSystems has carried out more than 15 public experiments with over 2,500 participants. He has been the coordinator of the Barcelona Citizen Science Office (until 2018, and founder in 2013), an initiative of the Barcelona City Council that functions as a community of practice for a large number of citizen science projects and implements specific programmes in civic centres, primary and secondary schools.

Rae Teitelbaum (they/them) Multidisciplinary visual artist, filmmaker, and researcher from Syracuse (New York) currently based in Barcelona. Rae’s artistic practice is rooted in film, video, performance, installation, sculpture, poetry, and textiles, using queer worlding (SF) as an approach to working with themes of ecology, gender, sexuality, community, and futurity. Rae’s work positions queer worlding as a collective process, which can involve spiritual, social, ecological practices, imaginaries, and desires, leading to the generation of experimental models of living in relation to other humans, more-than-humans, and land, as well as a potential radical tool for imagining and fabricating queer eco-imaginaries, worlds, and future-past-presents.

Rae graduated from Purchase College, NY, with a BA in Media, Society, and the Arts (2017), after which they completed an Advanced Studio Arts Diploma at Metáfora Studio Arts Programs (2019) in Barcelona. They then completed an MA in Digital Media: Image Making at Goldsmiths, University of London (2020). They are currently working on their PhD in visual anthropology, “Queer Worlding: Exploring Practices of Co-Creation in Queer and Trans Eco- Communities in Rural Spain and Portugal” (Goldsmiths, London).

Camila Opazo Sepúlveda holds a PhD in Society and Culture from the University of Barcelona and is a member of the editorial collective of the Polisemias project, organised by Sabers Migrants. From a feminist and decolonial perspective, her research addresses issues such as memory policies, repatriation and restitution practices, epistemic justice, and the ways in which different forms of knowledge—academic, community-based, and situated—dialogue and confront each other in contexts of historical inequality. Her work also focuses on the relationships between colonial memory, contemporary migration and interculturality, as well as the links between historical extractivism, coloniality and the climate crisis.

She is part of international research and collaboration networks that promote critical approaches to heritage, memory and decolonisation, participating in projects, seminars and collective publications aimed at fostering processes of critical reflection, historical reparation and social transformation.

Activity carried out within the framework of the MATCH (Mediterranean as the Climate Hotspot) residencies.

MATCH is a project co-funded by the European Union, in the framework of Creative Europe programme. It connects five cultural organizations based in the Mediterranean: Mapa das Ideas (PT), D6:EU (CY), La Friche la Belle de Mai (FR), BJCEM (BE), and the National Technical University of Athens (GR), each working with a local arts and community garden partners.

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