PhD Thesis
Title: River’s Rights - People’s Rights? Urban Socio-Ecological Conflicts in Asunción, Paraguay
PhD Supervisor & 2nd Reader: Shaila Seshia Galvin and Graziella Moraes Dias da Silva
Expected completion date: 2022-2023
Profile
Facundo Rivarola Ghiglione is a third year PhD candidate in Anthropology and Sociology. He worked as a Teaching Assistant both in the ANSO department and for the Interdisciplinary Masters Programmes, giving him a broad view on different fields, from medical anthropology, to visual anthropology, and anthropology of natural resources. In the spring 2020, Facundo was granted the Swiss National Science Foundation Doctoral Fellowship to fund his doctoral research for the remaining years. His research is titled “River’s Rights - People’s Rights? Urban Socio-Ecological Conflicts in Asunción, Paraguay,” and looks at social, environmental and political conflicts between marginalized riverfront communities, the private sector, NGOs and the Paraguayan State over access to urban spaces. New urban redevelopment projects in Asunción, capital of Paraguay, deem that floodplains areas of the city “rightfully” belong to the river and that marginalized communities living there should move elsewhere. However, these areas, known as Bañados, were never empty floodplains. Indigenous, mestizos and rural migrant communities have lived there since colonial times, forming a historically rooted socio-ecology with the neighboring river. In this way, his goal is to contribute to the understandings about novel forms of governing people and the “environment” in an era marked both by climate change as well as greater social and political inequalities.
Country of origin: Paraguay
Research Interests
- Environmental/Social Justice
- Social and Ecological Conflicts
- Human-Water Relations
- Urban Political Ecology
- More-Than-Human Anthropology
- Post-Colonial and Decolonial Studies
Fellowships, Grants and Awards
Swiss National Science Foundation’s Doctoral Fellowship (Doc.CH)