Wednesday, March 26 – Friday, March 28, 2025
The University of Texas at Austin
This conference is free and open to the public; no registration necessary
Wednesday, March 26 | 4:00–7:00 PM
School of Architecture
4:00 – 5:45 PM | Welcome and Opening Keynote
School of Architecture, 3rd floor lecture hall
Opening Remarks – Adela Pineda Franco, Director, LLILAS
Welcome – Heather Woofter, Dean, School of Architecture
Organizers’ Remarks – Juana Salcedo and Santiago Muñoz Arbeláez
Keynote Address – Alejandro Echeverri, Director, URBAM Center for Urban and Environmental Studies
Universidad EAFIT, Medellín
5:45 – 7:00 PM | Opening Reception
Mebane Gallery (GOL 2.105) and Courtyard
Thursday, March 27 | 9:30 AM–5:30 PM
Eastwoods Room (UNB 2.102) Texas Union
Session I – Political Ecologies and Environmental Histories
9:30–11:30 AM
This session will offer ways to move beyond the traditional confines of the city, to inquire about the extensive geographies of the urban, along with its infrastructures, environments, and political ecologies.
Seth Denizen, Washington University in Louis
“Mexico City–Mezquital Valley Hydrological System”
Felipe Correa, Somatic Collaborative, New York, NY
“Extractive Urbanisms”
Marixa Lasso, Tinker Visiting Professor (LLILAS), Centro de Investigaciones Históricas, Antropológicas y Culturales, Panama “Panama Canal, Infrastructure Making and Land Dispossession”
Chair: TBD
11:30 AM–12:30 PM | Light Lunch
Session II – Infrastructures and Nature Flows
12:30–3:00 PM
This panel will examine how nature flows, infrastructures, and technologies affect the urban experience, reshaping how people inhabit space and interact with each other.
CJ. Alvarez, UT Austin “Environmental History, US–Mexico Border”
Dean Chahim, New York University “Environmental Anthropology and the Logistics of Waste: Engineering, Capital Accumulation, and the Growth of Mexico City”
Zannah Matson, University of Colorado, Boulder “Marginal de la Selva, Colombia”
Chair: Lina Del Castillo, Associate Professor, LLILAS / Department of History, UT Austin
Coffee Break
Session III – Roundtable: Storytelling and Methods
3:30–5:30 PM
The participants in this roundtable will discuss how they have used non-conventional research methods, narratives, and media throughout their trajectories and how they envision using them in the future. It will be a central part of the conference, as it will illustrate how new approaches offer new research and narrative strategies to expand our understanding of the urban experience.
Javier Auyero, Urban Ethnography Lab, UT Austin
Barbara Mundy, Tulane University
Lorraine Leu, Spanish and Portuguese / LLILAS, UT Austin
Hannah Meszaros-Martin, University of Southern California and Plano Negativo
Chair: TBD
Friday, March 28 | 9:30 AM – 1:30 PM
Eastwoods Room (UNB 2.102) Texas Union
Session IV – Recentering Human and More-Than-Human Lives
9:30–11:30 AM
This session will present specific case studies that center the lives of marginalized beings and neglected aspects of urban life.
Ana María Durán Calisto, Yale University
“Urban History of Amazonia, with a focus on Indigenous systems of territorial planning and colonial disruptions”
Guadalupe García, University of California, San Diego; Havana
Alex Hidalgo, Texas Christian University
“Soundscapes of Colonial Mexico City”
Chair: TBD
12:00 – 1:30 PM | Closing Keynote
Lunch served
Keynote Address – Barbara Mundy, Martha and Donald Robertson Chair in Latin American Art
Tulane University
Introduced by Adela Pineda Franco, LLILAS Director
