Dr Olivia Casagrande
Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Lecturer
Full contact details
Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Geography and Planning Building
Winter Street
Sheffield
S3 7ND
- Profile
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I trained as an anthropologist in Italy, at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice (MA) and at the University of Verona (PhD), working on issues of political violence, exile and memory in Southern Chile.
From 2017 to 2020, I was Marie Curie Research Fellow at the School of Social Sciences of the University of Manchester and at the Instituto de Estudios Urbanos at the Pontificia Universidad Católica (Chile) with the project ‘MapsUrbe – The Invisible City: Mapuche Mapping of Santiago de Chile’. Through this project I explored theatre and art as practice-based and collaborative ethnographic methodologies.
I first joined the University of Sheffield in 2021 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate working on the ESRC NI project led by Dr Philipp Horn: ‘Indigenous development alternatives: An urban youth perspective from Bolivia’. Currently, I am PI on the ESRC NI project Set in stone? 'Desired whiteness' and the urban space: A collaborative research in (post) colonial Chile.
- Research interests
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My research interests range from politics, memory and violence, to spatial and urban anthropology. I have been working in Chile since 2008 and have recently started working in Bolivia. My research focus on indigenous lived experience and epistemologies, exploring the interplay between affectivity, narratives and spatial and political performances. I am currently exploring site-specific performance, art, and other visual methods, as practice-based and collaborative ethnographic methodologies.
My most recent projects collaboratively address indigenous migration and diaspora in urban contexts, centring on practices of place-making, political imaginations and visions, and issues of displacement and inequality, major challenges in contemporary urban contexts. Through close collaboration with indigenous artists and activists, these projects have resulted in multimodal and collaborative ethnography and active interventions into public debate. The outcomes of my MSCA research comprise an art exhibition and a theatre piece, and a collaboratively written book.
- Publications
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Books
- Il tempo spezzato. Biografia di una famiglia mapuche tra golpe ed esilio.
Edited books
- Performing the Jumbled City. Subversive Aesthetics and Anticolonial Indigeneity in Santiago de Chile.. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Journal articles
- Scenes from El Alto: indigenous youth visions for urban Bolivia. Projections: the Journal of the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 17. View this article in WRRO
- ‘On Our Own Terms’: Refusal, Masks, and Indigenous Counter-narratives in Santiago de Chile Public Space. International Public History, 5(2), 93-104.
- Unexpected places: land, words and silence in a Mapuche family trajectory of (dis)placement. Identities, 29(2), 146-163.
- Towards a
tuwün wariache
? Place‐making and creative acts of traversing in the Mapuche city. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 27(4), 949-975.
- Performing the Indigenous City: Collaborative Ethnography, Site-Specific Performance and Political Imagination in Santiago, Chile.. Entanglements. Experiments in Multimodal Ethnography, 2(1), 173-187.
- 'La politica è winka, la historia es Mapuche'. Alleanze, conflitti e trasformazioni all’interno della pratica politica mapuche.. EtnoAntropologia, 3(2), 77-92.
- Achieving co-presence when together and apart: Hybrid engagements and multi-modal collaborative research with urban indigenous youth. Qualitative Research.
- Visual Effects: A Fake Indigenous Warrior, A Contested Hill and Urban Imaginaries of Indigeneity in Santiago de Chile. Bulletin of Latin American Research.
- For subversive political aesthetics: Mestizo performances challenging monuments of whiteness in Santiago’s urban space. darkmatter Journal : In the Ruins of Imperial Culture.
- "Do You See What I Mean?". TSANTSA – Journal of the Swiss Anthropological Association, 20, 108-116.
Chapters
- The embodied spatiality of fear: dwelling (in)security in Porto Alegre. In Bonini E, Vanin F & Achutti D (Ed.), Reducing Boundaries (pp. 109-126). Milan: Mimesis International.
- The mapuche political practice: partial connections, misunderstandings and new strategies. In Tomaselli A, Rosti M, Cammarata R & Scardozzi C (Ed.), Challenges to indigenous political and socio-economic participation: Natural Resources, Gender, Education and Intellectual Property.
- 'Como trabajar la piedra’. Storia di Marta e Carlos tra golpe, esilio e memoria del tempo antico. In Robertini C & Correr F (Ed.), America Latina e Dinamiche Territoriali (pp. 23-30). Oistros Edizioni
- ‘Il mio paese sconosciuto’. Memorie e narrazioni della seconda generazione dell’esilio cileno. In Valseriati E, Ferdinand J & Vitali F (Ed.), Percorsi incrociati sulla memoria. Ricordo, scrittura, rappresentazione. (pp. 53-70). Verona: QUIEDIT.
- Il tempo spezzato. Biografia di una famiglia mapuche tra golpe ed esilio.