Biography
Daniela Sclavo is a biologist and historian of science working on cultural understandings of crop conservation efforts and the intersections between food security and sovereignty. She studied biology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and a master’s degree in History and Philosophy of Science at University College of London. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge as part of the project “From Collection to Cultivation”, directed by Dr. Helen Anne Curry.
She has also collaborated with the collective Cocina Colaboratorio (www.colaboratorykitchen.com) since 2020, where she has explored the meaning, state, and stories of chile peppers in the community of Santo Domingo, Oaxaca, particularly alongside women who hold extensive local culinary knowledge. From 2022, she and the Cocina Colaboratorio team co-lead the project “Living Biocultural Archives: Collective Archivism” through the Grant Imagining Futures (https://imaginingfutures.world/projects/living-biocultural-archives-collective-archivism/).
Research
Daniela’s project focuses on how subjective elements such as flavour, identity and senses of belonging have an impact on the way crops are valued by different social groups. In this sense, she explores how different ideas and instances of care, loss, and imaginary futures shape conservation efforts and whose knowledge/participation is validated, considered, or obscured, and by whom. Her career focus is to explore alternative, plural, and more responsible ways of doing history, such as participatory-action research and the co-creation of past, present, and future narratives.
