Gabriel G. Roman is a PhD candidate in the SeedsValues Project, jointly supervised by the Université Libre the Bruxelles (ULB) and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). He holds a BA in Sociology (UFPR – Brazil) and an MA in Development Studies (NMBU – Norway). For his MA thesis, he explored cassava cultivation and processing in a quilombola-remnant community in Pará (Brazil), focusing on the ways these practices and the materiality of the roots shape the sociality and subjectivity of the community members. His attention to crops has been informed by material semiotics and actor-network theory. In the SeedsValues project, he has kept this theoretical approach in order to investigate human-maize relatedness among Ëyuujk (Mixe) cultivators in the highlands of Oaxaca (Mexico).

Publications

• Roman, G. G., & Westengen, O. T. (2021). Taking measure of an escape crop: Cassava relationality in a contemporary quilombo-remnant community. Geoforum