Speaker: Daniela Sclavo - Université libre de Bruxelles
Date: 1 & 2 June 2026
Venue: Georgia Institute of Technology - United States of America

This intervention explores how stories of food, memory and everyday practice can offer new ways of thinking about the conservation of biocultural diversity. Drawing on collaborative research conducted with the community of Santo Domingo Tomaltepec, Oaxaca, the presentation followed the story of guiintabich—a local chile variety remembered by older community members long after it had disappeared from local cultivation. Rather than framing this as a story of simple loss, the presentation showed how memories, culinary knowledge and collective action can become starting points for reconnecting communities with crops, flavours and cultural practices that continue to shape everyday life.

The presentation reflected on how crops such as chile are not only agricultural resources but living expressions of family histories, local identities and intergenerational knowledge. Through the collaborative search for tabiche seeds, conversations with cooks, market vendors and farmers, and the organisation of community culinary encounters, the research illustrates how conservation can be understood as a process of reweaving relationships rather than simply recovering what has been lost. More broadly, the talk argued for participatory and interdisciplinary approaches that bring together ethnography, food practices and community collaboration to imagine more just and resilient futures for crop diversity.