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Maka Suarez

makasuarez

I'm a co-founder of Kaleidos - Center for Interdisciplinary Ethnography, a space for academic experimentations supported by two top ranked universities in Ecuador (University of Cuenca and FLACSO-Ecuador). We are located in Cuenca, where I am assistant professor of medical anthropology. Together with a team of researchers we have been tracking covid19 with a specific focus on Latin America through Spanish language podcasts, collective texts, webinars, and online forums.

My current ethnographic interest is on documenting data distrust networks from the neighborhood scale to the national level in Ecuador, and how these networks have produced distinctive approaches (and failures) to the current pandemic.

Transnational STS COVID-19 Project Participants

Thomas De Pree

I am situated in Albuquerque, New Mexico in the U.S. Southwest. I have a background conducting multi-locale ethnographic research on the politics of cleaning up uranium mine waste and mill tailings in northwestern New Mexico. I am now concerned about how abandoned mine lands (AMLs) and other decaying toxic infrastructures of settler colonial extraction and development compound environmental health risks and impacts in Native American communities. How has COVID-19 unfolded in the Navajo Nation (Dinétah)? What pre-existing environmetnal health vulnerabilities have exacerbated the impact of COVID-19? How can we forge culturally appropriate pathways of resilience in response to the initial impact of the pandemic?