Presentation short abstract

Applying participatory action research with the Danish 'Institute for Eternal Utopias', focusing on ecofeminist approaches, the study explores how art-science-activist collaborations integrate methods and practices to challenge dominant epistemologies and advance climate justice.

Presentation long abstract

The climate crisis has intensified debates on the transformations needed for ecological and social sustainability. Ecofeminism provides a crucial analytical and political lens for understanding intertwined ecological and socio-economic injustices. This contribution examines how ecofeminist perspectives materialise in practice within transdisciplinary collaborations that bring together art, scientific inquiry, and activist engagement. Focusing on the Copenhagen-based initiative 'Institute for Eternal Utopias', the study explores how intersectional, care-based, and embodied ecofeminist approaches shape collaborative knowledge production and modes of resistance.

As scientific research, artistic practice, and activism increasingly intersect, researchers adopt artistic methods, artists engage in climate activism, and activists draw on academic concepts. However, the impacts of these convergences remain insufficiently understood. This project examines how artists, scientists, and activists collaborate to create practices that challenge dominant epistemologies, transcend disciplinary boundaries, and foster alternative imaginaries for ecological and social futures.

Applying creative and participatory research methods, including participatory action research (PAR), the study traces how ecofeminist practices illuminate often invisible forms of labour, exploitation, and care. The research unfolds in three stages: first, mapping situated working practices; second, examining collaborative processes, strategies, and ecofeminist interventions; and third, analysing how these collaborations transform individual and collective repertoires of methods, practices, and engagement.

By foregrounding ecofeminist approaches to co-creation and resistance, the study contributes to debates on how transdisciplinary, practice-based engagements can deepen analyses of interconnected ecological and social injustices. Ultimately, it offers practical insights for fostering more pluralistic and justice-oriented forms of knowledge integration within art-science-activist collaborations and wider climate justice movements.

Presentation short abstract

Materialist ecofeminism asks hard questions—but what happens when inquiry turns back on the self? This talk reflects on the toll of engaging with systemic power and explores *discernment as a shared skill* for keeping collective action alive in crisis-filled times.

Presentation long abstract

This presentation reflects on the personal and collective tensions encountered in practicing materialist ecofeminism. I focus on the intimate toll of engaging with systems of power—capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy—that systematically undermine ecological and social flourishing. Rather than emphasizing the vast distance between ecofeminist aspirations and societal realities, while being true, I explore how this gap becomes an arena of self-inquiry, in which critique and activism can paradoxically turn against the self. Drawing on experiences as a sympathizer and activist in this field, I examine the questioning of self-efficacy, the strain on voice, and the sense of lost momentum amid democratic erosion in the USA and parts of Europe, alongside global crises of war, genocide, and ecological destruction. Building on therapeutic approaches to ecofeminism (Pompeo-Fargnoli, 2018) and reflections from degrowth movements (Saave, 2022), I consider what may be necessary to counter the effects of sustained engagement with these systems. I explore the notion of *discernment as a shared skill* within ecofeminist-aligned communities—a fragile but crucial precondition for sustaining collective efforts toward meaningful ecological and social transformation. The presentation offers a reflective, practice-oriented draft of an essay. It invites the participants to examine what it means to think and act in alignment with a materialist ecofeminist orientation while navigating the pressures, ambivalences, and isolation that emerge in times of stagnating transformative sustainability politics.

Presentation short abstract

Saraguro Indigenous women-led organisation defending the Fierro Urku wetlands from encroaching mining interests. We argue that their leadership, rooted in collective care, Andean identity and deep territorial experience

Presentation long abstract

Against the backdrop of global environmental challenges, such as expanding extractive industries and unequal socio-environmental burdens, this work explores the woman-led organisation that protects the Fierro Urku wetland from growing mining concessions in Ecuador’s southeastern Andean highlands. Centring on the June 2022 blockade at the entrance to the wetland, along the Loma de Oro road in the canton of Saraguro, the article examines how their collective action takes shape at the intersection of immediate local pressures and broader structural dynamics. This presentation focuses on the Saraguro Indigenous women-led organisation defending the Fierro Urku wetlands from encroaching mining interests. We argue that their leadership, rooted in collective care, Andean identity and deep territorial experience, challenges both extractivism and male-dominated organisational structures.

Their actions draw upon long-standing processes of Andean cultural revitalisation, strong community solidarity, Andean principles, and a profound commitment to caring for and defending water. Together, these elements shape organisational forms grounded in historical territorial struggles, as well as in the varied leadership roles women take on through community labour, the strengthening of local and ancestral knowledge, and their sense of belonging. Despite facing repression, criminalisation, gendered power asymmetries, and the disproportionate demands of domestic and care work, these women sustain meaningful political participation and collective action. The experience of Fierro Urku thus offers insight into alternative models of political and social organisation, underscoring Indigenous women’s central role in protecting water and in maintaining the vital relationships that bind community and nature.

Presentation short abstract

Using the example of the Dutch greenhouse tomato, we use ecofeminism and feminist political ecology to question the ideology of mastery of nature and unintended feral effects hidden behind “Controlled-Environment Agriculture”.

Presentation long abstract

The high-tech Dutch greenhouse agriculture sector is often presented as a possible model to be emulated worldwide for global food security issues, due to its high productivity, purported efficient use of resources and insulation from future climate risks. Less visible in social discourse are the environmental and social impacts of this model of production, which include exploitation of migrant labor, high energy and material use (including fossil fuels for heating) and contribution to further degradation of the Dutch biodiversity. Even less discussed is the effect of these constrained environments on the greenhouse plants themselves and on their fungal, bacterial and insect kin.

We draw on the foundational ecofeminist works of Val Plumwood, Deborah Bird Rose and Carolyn Merchant, putting them into dialogue with other contemporary strands of critical and feminist political ecology and more-than-human studies, including the contributions of Giovanna Di Chiro, Anna Tsing and Donna Haraway. We focus on the case of the Dutch greenhouse tomato and how the surrounding project of “Controlled-Environment Agriculture” relies on the commodification of species and on treating plants, insects and human workers as disposable, often expected to work as machines. Ecofeminism goes beyond just criticizing emerging ecological contradictions from growthist capitalism, to point to how the deeper rift between humanity and the rest of nature is based on dualisms that express themselves in the project of control and mastery of nature, and ends up creating unintended consequences, which can be understood as expressions of “ferality” (Anna Tsing) and “monsters of uncontrollability” (Hartmut Rosa).

Presentation short abstract

Copper mining in the North of Chile is widely researched. However, not many have used a feminist political ecology framework to understand the issue of mining and extraction in Chile. In the context of a so-called energy transition, new methodologies are essential to shift the current paradigm.

Presentation long abstract

Chile is the largest copper producer, and the second largest producer of lithium worldwide. In the context of the so-called energy transition, critical minerals are gaining more attention. Historically, copper mining in the North of Chile has been widely researched. However, not many have used a feminist political ecology framework to understand the complex socioecological dynamics that take place in mineral extraction. My aim is to make visible stories from the peripheries of mineral extraction and question the dynamics involved in the energy transition. My grandparents spent most of their lives in mining settlements. Through ethnographic interviews, I will look into the missing links in between the extraction of raw material like copper and export. In particular, the cuerpo-territorio (body-territory) methodology (developed by feminist movements in Abya Yala, and popularized by Lorena Cabnal) will help me capture the socioecological implications when territories and bodies are subject to mineral extraction. I propose that without a feminist political ecology approach to the planetary crisis there is a risk of reproducing systemic injustices. Focusing on the narratives, micro-politics, the daily tasks, the common activities, and the differences embodied in mining settlements can help us have a more comprehensive approach to extractivism, the so-called energy transition, and its impacts on the Global South.

Presentation short abstract

Using participatory video, we explore stories of Dutch female agroecological farmers. A shared narrative emerges of agroecology as a rooted network built on care, relationality and territory. This positions farmers’ practices as constructive resistance and political proposal for just food systems.

Presentation long abstract

Agroecology tells a story of food systems as relational, transformative and political calling for a re-organization from below. Research on how agroecology, as a science, a movement and a practice provides a counter-narrative to resists industrial food systems has largely focused on regions outside of Europe. Inspired by women-led initiatives resisting exploitative relations in food systems, we co-created a storytelling process with female agroecological farmers in the Netherlands. We used participatory video as a methodological tool which enables participants to control the narratives shared, centring on their lived experiences and perspectives. Guided by the question, "What moves you as an agroecological farmer?", the farmers recorded stories of their everyday lives, which were then shared in a joint screening. Connections were symbolically spun with yarn and unravelled through dialogue, creating space for exchange and collective reflection on the language and stories shaping Dutch agroecology. Positive discourse analysis reveals a shared narrative of agroecology as a ‘rooted network’ (Rocheleau) – a vision grounded in caring ‘naturecultures’ (Haraway), multilateral power relations, the connection to territory and the inclusion of diverse perspectives from human and more-than-human actors. Rooted networks become an ecofeminist analytical tool highlighting how female agroecological farmers challenge hegemonic food system logics by emphasizing relationality, territoriality, and collective agency. This positions agroecological initiatives not as a niches but as acts of constructive resistance (Lilja) and a political proposal for food futures which overcome dichotomies of humans and nature.

Presentation short abstract

In Extremadura, Spain, rural communities are being sacrificed for lithium extractivism. Using the feminist concept of phantom possession, the paper shows how they contest extractive entitlements through horizontal, care-based practices and the revival of collective memories of struggle.

Presentation long abstract

This contribution examines conflicts around lithium extraction in Extremadura, Spain, through a feminist political-ecology lens. The hegemonic green transition intensifies pressure to extract so-called critical minerals. Rural territories are increasingly framed as necessary sites of “green sacrifice.” Such narratives enact material dispossession, but also shape whose knowledge, agency, and futures are recognised as legitimate.

To analyse these dynamics, I mobilise the concept "phantom possession" (v. Redecker 2020). Phantom possession describes the afterlife of domination as propertization: historically sedimented entitlement that persists after its institutional bases have eroded. While originally theorised in relation to racialised and gendered domination, I adapt the concept to extractivist and rural politics. It captures how corporations and state actors cultivate a spectral claim to land, livelihoods, and the very possibility of rural populations to imagine their futures. In a region marked by long-standing peripheralization, this intersects with internalised identities of dispensability, producing a terrain in which extractivism appears inevitable and incontestable.

Against this backdrop, the paper explores emergent cracks and contestations. Local communities increasingly challenge extractive entitlements. In prefigurative practices - alternative modes of relating to one another and non-human nature rooted in care, horizontal organising, and the reactivation of memories of peasant struggle - they counter internalised disposability and open space for imagining Extremadura as a “territory of struggle, not sacrifice”.

The paper also reflects on an activist–scholar mapping project that visualises memories of anti-extractivist struggle. The map functions as a humble aid to political subjectivation: making struggles visible and enabling shared narratives of resistance.

Presentation short abstract

This presentation examines feminist commoning practices as resistance to neoliberal capitalism and patriarchy. Drawing on Federici's analysis of reproductive labour and women's ecofeminist leadership, we demonstrate how commons create autonomous spaces that challenge capitalist exploitation.

Presentation long abstract

This presentation examines concrete practices of feminist commoning as ecofeminist resistance to neoliberal capitalism and patriarchal structures. Drawing on Silvia Federici's analysis, we argue that capitalism fundamentally depends on the exploitation of unpaid reproductive labour—the work of caring, nurturing, and maintaining life that produces labour power itself. As neoliberal austerity intensifies this exploitation, systematically downloading social reproduction costs onto women's unpaid labour, marginalised communities create alternatives that refuse this arrangement while building autonomous alliances from below. These commoning practices—from community-controlled spaces and collective childcare to shared resource networks, tool and seed libraries, and intergenerational knowledge transmission—break down capitalist divisions between home and community, waged and unwaged work, domestic and public spheres. Understanding feminist commons as autonomous spaces from which to challenge (not escape) the existing capitalist organisation of life and labour, this work demonstrates how these practices emerge not from reforming institutions but from collectively inhabiting and transforming the ruins left by capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal systems. Drawing connections to women's ecofeminist leadership internationally, we reveal how commoning practices create "elsewheres" that transform both material relations and desires. These are spaces where reproduction becomes collective rather than individualised, where the commons represents both the social relations we aim to achieve and the means for constructing them. This presentation demonstrates how ecofeminist commons offer practical models for post-capitalist, post-patriarchal social organisation grounded in care, justice, and ecological flourishing, while challenging the commodification of life and labour under global capitalism.

Presentation short abstract

Drawing on FPE, this paper argues that everyday water practices are not merely survival acts, but rather a form of political activism amidst financialised urban water. These mundane practices constitute pragmatic hope as a situated, collective, and persistent effort to pursue alternatives.

Presentation long abstract

In the context of financially driven urban water governance and the rise of authoritarianism in Jakarta, scholars and activists are compelled to think creatively about resistance in the pursuit of water justice. Inspired by Feminist Political Ecology (FPE), this paper argues that the everyday water practices conducted by women in Jakarta’s informal settlements are not merely an act of survival, but a form of activism in its own right. The mundane actions of negotiating with municipal water workers, navigating bureaucratic red tape, and tinkering with water infrastructure demonstrate residents’ refusal to accept financialised urban water governance. Working alongside and in support of a more legalistic approach to Jakarta’s water justice struggle, the everyday water practice serves as a pragmatic hope: a situated, collective and embodied practice of imagining the world otherwise. Such pragmatic hope through everyday water practice places women not just as victims, but rather as a vanguard of the water justice movement, whose persistent yet subtle political labour continues to challenge existing urban water inequality. The presentation begins by briefly outlining the ebb and flow of Jakarta’s water justice struggle. Then, by sharing images and excerpts from interviews with residents, the presentation demonstrates the shifts in perspective and strategy of Jakarta’s water justice movement. Next, using the same media, the presentation highlights the variety of mundane practices that residents carry out despite the uncertainties of water access. Ultimately, by presenting those points, this paper reinforces the importance of an active and stubborn act of resistance.

Presentation short abstract

This contribution focuses on the way in which the predicative deconstruction of attributes historically assigned to nature, women, and colonized peoples allows us to question the distinction between the concepts of human and nature still present in the debate on environmental question.

Presentation long abstract

This contribution aims to analyze the way in which materialist ecofeminist investigations allows us to overcome the distinction between human and nature that is still present in narratives relating to environmental question. The context of these narratives is one that views human and nature as concepts representing the two generic subjects of the ecological relationship, where the postulation of their intrinsic relationality actually conceals a philosophical paradigm that still treats them as two distinct domains to be united through an effort of conjunction. With regard to the interpretation of the global climate crisis, the ecofeminist perspective offers the tools to re-understand the concepts used. By focusing on the association between women and nature in a movement aimed at its deconstruction, it allows us to question the specific subjects present within the two concepts mentioned above, thus managing to go beyond the abstraction that presupposes a difference between the two. Following the importance recognized by the authors in the study of descriptive attributes, this work will be conducted through an examination of the predicates assigned to the different subjects present in the two reference categories, showing how the predicative commonality that affected nature, women, and colonized peoples leads to questioning the very concepts of human and nature in their formal distinction, revealing how their historical roots actually conceal their true interpenetration.