OUR TEAM
A multiplicity of perspectives on real-world issues
Roger Norum
Anthropologist investigating connections between mobility, media and environment, with research focus on socio-environmental conflicts in the Arctic and Asia. Additional expertise in education strategy, interdisciplinary and participatory methodologies, and funding acquisition. Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at University of Oulu (Finland). BA Cornell, PhD Oxford
Elizabeth Rahman
Medical and social anthropologist specialized in indigenous perception and techniques of mindfulness in diverse socio-environmental settings, with a special focus on Amazonia and rural Spain. Expertise in public policy educational evaluation, participatory research techniques, online pedagogy. Anthropology PhD, Oxford. Senior Evaluation Officer, Education Policy Support, University of Oxford.
Alejandro Reig
Researcher, consultant and teacher, focused on socio-environmental issues, with a focus on Amazonia, on issues of indigenous environmental management, mobility and healthcare. He has extensive experience in the development of cultural engineering projects in various formats. PhD Anthropology Oxford, BA Philosophy Universidad Central de Venezuela.
Director and coordinator of OIKEiOS
Laia Soto
Researcher on migration, ethnic and religious identity, urban inequality, informal economies and border dynamics in the EU's peripheries, with extensive experience in the Mediterranean. Former co-Editor in chief of the European journal Social Anthropology. PhD. Oxford.
Kike Arnal
Documentary photographer and videographer specialized in social and environmental reportage, with experience in the Americas, the Middle East, Asia and Europe. Along with many individual and collective exhibitions, his work has been published and/or aired in the New York Times, National Geographic, Life, Mother Jones and Discovery Channel Canada.
Pablo Dominguez
Environmental anthropologist specialised in agro-silvo-pastoralist systems, with extensive experience in the Mediterranean –Morocco, Spain, France and the Balkans. Focus on community-based governance of natural resources and territories. Senior researcher at the French CNRS, based at the Eco-Anthropology laboratory of the Museum of Humankind (Paris). BSc in Environmental Biology (UAM-Madrid and AMU-Marseille). PhD in Social Anthropology (EHESS-Paris and UAB-Barcelona).
Michael Athanson
Cartographer and spatial analyst. Specialist in GIS, databases, remote sensing, and historic mapping. Experience in trade and academic publication. Former map librarian and curator of special collections at Oxford, PhD Oxford.
Hélène Neveu Kringelbach
Social anthropologist specialized in transnational and interracial marriage, family migration, race and gender issues, urban popular culture, dance and the politics of performance in francophone West Africa. Special expertise in Senegal. Associate Professor of African Anthropology at UCL in London. Vice-Dean EDI (Equally, Diversity and Inclusion) at UCL 2019-2022. DPhil in Anthropology from the University of Oxford.
Edmundo Bracho
Researcher and Lecturer in Communication studies and politics, specialized in Latin America, Journalist and Writer. Senior Lecturer in Communication, Development Programme Coordinator, BA Universidad Central de Venezuela, PhD University of Westminster.
Tarek Milleron
Forest ecologist with extensive experience in Amazonia and the Guianas. He conducted field work in lowland tropical forests over 15 years before focusing entirely on practical forest conservation projects based in indigenous communities. He designed the Maquisapa palm tree climbing system and the learning application Object-to-Audio, and is co-founder of Recursos Amazónicos Frutales, based in Iquitos, Peru. Ph.D. (Ecology) Utah State University..
Jose Antonio Kelly Luciani
Social anthropologist, teacher and consultant specialising in Amazonia, focusing on health care, transformations in indigenous societies and relations with the state. He was coordinator of the Yanomami Health Plan in Venezuela and has participated in the health evaluation of mining communities. Degree in Engineering, Simón Bolívar University, PhD in Anthropology, Cambridge.
Amy MacLennan
Medical anthropologist, consultant, educator and public policy advisor with expertise in food systems, health and emerging technologies. She helped found the School of Cybernetics at the Australian National University, and has worked in the Australian Government's Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. . Degrees in biomedical science and French (Flinders University), anatomical sciences (University of Adelaide), anthropology PhD, Oxford.
Marine biologist, educator and researcher, consultant in environmental management focused on coastal areas, with extensive experience in the coordination and implementation of environmental impact studies and environmental management systems in South and Central America. Director of INCOSTAS, specialising in coastal engineering and oceanography, and Director of GEA Consultores Ambientales. In Uruguay he was the National Director of Environment and Project Director of the Centre for Environmental Studies. He is a public speaker and author of publications on environmental issues, MSc. in Environmental Sciences and PhD. in Conservation of Natural Resources and Environmental Restoration.
Ulises Milla
Publisher with extensive experience in management and conceptualisation of editorial projects in Latin America, the USA and Spain, focused in the humanities and science writing, memoirs and non-fiction. Director of Editorial Alfa and Editorial Big Sur. Management of on-demand publishing, graphic design of books and journals, advertising and commercial campaigns. Villasmil de León School of Design, Diploma.
Marcela Vethencourt Koifman
Architect and museographer with extensive experience in design and project management of scientific and cultural exhibitions in Latin America, Europe and Japan. She has worked as external consultant for UNESCO-México in different projects in the museum field. Postgraduate teacher in museography and exhibition production. Architecture degree Universidad Central de Venezuela, specialisation in conservation of architectonic heritage Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Postgrad in Ephemeral spaces by Arquine and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.
Oscar Noya Alarcón
Medical doctor specialised in parasitology with extensive experience in field work in Amazonian territories and tropical medicine in indigenous populations. Researcher, pilot and operations coordinator of the Onchocerciasis Elimination Programme in the Southern Focus of Venezuela-SACAICET. Medical surgeon and M.Sc. in Parasitology, Central University of Venezuela.
Patricia Iriarte
Writer, journalist, museographer and cultural manager with extensive work experience in Colombia. University teacher and manager in educational and cultural institutions in the Caribbean region, editor with over twenty titles in social sciences, journalism, literature and research. She has published on popular music artists and her poetic works have appeared in anthologies and literary portals. Social Communications graduate from the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in Bogotá, Master's degree in Caribbean Studies from the National University of Colombia.
Gustavo Luis Reig
Internationally certified English to Spanish translator with long term expertise in a wide variety of formats, specialized in audiovisual media, video and cinema (dialogues, voiceover, narrative synthesis, captions), technical reports, monographs and outreach projects..
Tatiana Giusti
Medical doctor specialising in management and training for health professionals, with experience in health and community management programmes in Amazonian indigenous and rural communities. Expert in academic transformation processes. Executive Director of the organisation Universo Docere Venezuela, Deputy Director of Training of the Curricular Development Directorate of the Central University of Venezuela. Teaching coordinator of the Proyecto Mayu Foundation. Surgeon and M.Sc. in Parasitology UCV, M.A. International Education Management, Ludwigsburg Pedagogical University, Germany.
Ana Babic
Architect and museographer with solid experience in artistic, scientific and environmental exhibitions in Latin America and Europe, as well as in the design and development of projects in urban spaces.
Architect, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Master in Urban Design at the Universidad Metropolitana de Caracas.
WHO WE ARE - WHAT WE DO
We build teams to craft strategies, solutions, and communication environments
The members of our technical consultancy network are professionals from the social, medical and environmental sciences with diverse experience in the fields of human development, grassroots community work, environmental conservation, education and healthcare, in a variety of geographical settings: South America, Oceania, Southern and Northern Europe, North, East and West Africa, UK and the Arctic.
We have researched, conducted, and assessed initiatives in which socio-environmental tensions had to be addressed by governments, corporations, and multilateral agencies to advance human development goals. From that background, we aim to expand the reach of our potential contributions, making the best of our network to craft consultancy teams working at different scales and stages of the cases we are solicited for. In each specific case, we provide expert analysis and assessment and seek to build sustainable collaborative workgroups in which different stakeholders can align themselves to reach specific objectives of wellbeing, educational, economic and environmental betterment for communities.
Our communications and cultural engineering network comprises museographers, graphic and industrial designers, editors, translators, photographers, and videographers with vast experience in the conceptualization and production of exhibitions, audiovisual media, photographic documentation, and publications.
Researchers and producers of technical knowledge –in the natural and social sciences, but also policy-makers and government officers, and NGOS—, fail to communicate the results of the work to larger audiences, because of their concentration in environments of peers sharing the same language, disconnected from the perspectives and languages of the public sphere. This creates a gap between the production of technical knowledge and its understanding and use by lay people, which can be bridged by the specialized work of science journalists and writers, filmmakers and Museum exhibition designers, all professionals with a hybrid and often multidisciplinary experience. Communicating the results of specific development interventions at different scales and in different formats is crucial to enable the understanding and appropriation of these results by the communities involved and by society at large, and this is what we can do through the teams of cultural engineering and science popularisation from our network.
Culture, Politics, Inclusion: local economics and global networks
We address the complexities and opportunities of the human factor
in development initiatives
Our social anthropological perspective, based on close-range ethnographic research, takes us to construct holistic assessments of the cases we examine and provide a range of alternatives to address the problems met by development and welfare initiatives on the ground.
These may be the difficulties faced by national health systems to provide attention to hinterland aboriginal populations; the connections between environmental depletion, obesity and cultural changes in rapidly developing insular areas; issues of exclusion and marginality in complex multi-ethnic postcolonial settings; tourism alternatives to extractivist development in contested areas of the Arctic.