Who We Are

We identify as a group of scholar-activists who have been individually and collectively inspired by those who have used relational worldviews to address the series of political and ecological crises we face in this time. Since 2012, we have been organizing seminars, symposiums, and workshops on relationality and pluriversal activism. The purpose of this website is to archive the ideas and material we have gathered since the genesis of the project, and to share, connect, and document the mapping of knowledges and concepts that we have used to inform our work on relationality. 

Arturo Escobar  

Arturo Escobar is Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Research Associate with the Culture, Memory, and Nation group at Universidad del Valle (Cali) and the Cultural Studies groups at Universidad Javeriana (Bogota).  His main interests are: political ecology, ontological design, and the anthropology of development, social movements, and technoscience.  Over the past twenty-five years, he has worked closely with several Afro-Colombian social movements in the Colombian Pacific, particular the Process of Black Communities (PCN).  His most well-known book is Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (1995, 2nd Ed. 2011).  His most recent books are Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes (2008; 2010 for the Spanish edition); Sentipensar con la Tierra. Nuevas lecturas sobre desarrollo, territorio y diferencia (2014); Autonomía y diseño: La realización de lo comunal (2016; February 2018 for the English edition, Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds); and Otro posible es posible: Caminando hacia las transiciones desde Abya Yala/Afro/Latino-América (2018).    Some of his works can be downloaded from http://aescobar.web.unc.edu/  

Michal Osterweil  

Michal Osterweil’s research focuses on contemporary social movements and their knowledge production. Her dissertation focused on the theoretical-practice and political imaginaries of the Italian “Global Justice Movement” and related transnational networks, in particular those affiliated with Zapatismo. She has also published on World and Regional Social Forums, as well as other actors active in contemporary anti-capitalist movements. She is interested in the “new political imaginary” being developed at the intersection of the Counter-Summits, World Social Forum and Zapatista movements.  

In addition to her research, she is committed to cultivating new knowledge production practices in the university community and beyond. She has been involved with UNC’s Social Movement Working Group since its inception, as well as various research/working groups in the University Program in Cultural Studies, and is dedicated to involving her students (as well as neighbors and friends) in inter- and transdisciplinary projects aimed at solving social and political ills of our day.