Daniela Sclavo is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. She completed her doctoral studies at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, funded by the CONAHCYT-Cambridge Scholarship. Her work investigated the conservation of chile pepper in Mexico from the 1970s until the present, especially the ways in which culinary knowledge, generally gendered, plays a fundamental role in the conservation of biocultural diversity – something still overlooked by most environmental and food security research and policy institutions. She has collaborated in the food sovereignty collective Cocina Colaboratorio since 2020, where she undertook her doctoral fieldwork in the Zapotec community of Santo Domingo Tomaltepec. She has then expanded her role in the collective by co-leading the project “Living Biocultural Archive: Collective Archivism” as part of the grant Imagining Futures, funded by the University of Exeter and the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). In SeedsValues, Daniela will co-explore the relational values and affectivities of maize in the Oaxaca Lowlands, particularly in Santo Domingo Tomaltepec, with different local epistemic groups such as farmers, women cooks, agroecologists, and groups of youth interested in protecting their biocultural heritage. Within this study, she will endeavour to open collective reflection spaces where the relationship of seeds and knowledge-holders can be compared to commerce-focused production in nearby fields, and how this has shaped maize diversity’s movement, conservation, and management.

Publications

• Sclavo Castillo, Daniela. Culture, Gender, and Flavour in the Conservation of Chile Pepper in Mexico, 1970s-present. Diss. 2024
• Sclavo Castillo, Daniela. Framing the Traditional: Counterrevolution and Gender in Mexican Ethnobotanical Research Through the 1970s and 1980s. Journal of Ethnobiology 43.3 (2023): 262-273.
• Sclavo Castillo, Daniela. Flavour, culture and food security: The spicy entanglements of chile pepper conservation in 21st century Mexico." Plants, People, Planet 6.5 (2024): 1111-1120.
• Sclavo Castillo, Daniela, Lucía Pérez Volkow, and Emilio Hernández Martínez. "El chile tabiche: memoria, reencuentro y acción comunitaria en Santo Domingo Tomaltepec, Oaxaca, México." Naturaleza y Sociedad. Desafíos Medioambientales 8 (2024): 79-103.