Welcome at the website of Colaboratory Kitchen. Your currently used browser is outdated, probably insecure, and may cause display errors on this website. Here you can download the most recent browsers: browsehappy.com

Javascript is disabled in your browser. In order to view the page correctly, enable Javascript and refresh the page. You can read further instructions here: enable-javascript.com.

P R C C

Researchers

The kitchen table is where people from different backgrounds meet, exchange, design, cook, eat and imagine a future of food together. In this section you will find profiles of people who have joined this kitchen table as well as tools, videos, reports, podcasts, videos or recipes that they have developed in collaboration with others. This Archive/Table is composed of four different (main) groups that interact and intersect: chefs, producers, scientists and creatives. Click on any of the sides of the table to read more about what's been cooking.

15.12.2020

Profile

Elena Lazos

Social Anthropologist

Professor-Researcher at the Institute of Social Research, UNAM since 1992. Biologist (UNAM), Master Social Anthropology (ENAH) and Doctorate Socio-economics of Development (EHESS, Paris). Her lines of research have been in Political ecology around the conservation of agrodiversity and food sovereignty, Perceptions about transgenic corn, Gender and rurality, Socio-environmental vulnerabilities to climate change, Culture and power. Author and co-author of 8 books and 125 scientific articles and book chapters. Holder of 70 courses in Mexico, France, Switzerland, Canada, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Greece, Germany. Director of 70 theses. Holder of Latin American Chairs in Montreal, Zürich and La Sorbonne, Paris. President of the GreenpeaceMéx Advisory Council and AGTER Council (France). Co-founder of the Social Studies Network on the Environment. Co-coordinator of the CLACSO Group “Common goods and free access to knowledge.” Author at IPBES. Among others, some of her projects have been “Role of Biodiversity in Climate Change” – funded by the European Union. “Threats and vulnerabilities in the Mexican countryside: Agrobiodiversity, seeds, migration and climate change,” funded by UNAM. “Knowledge Networks in Yucatán” financed by CONACyT.

In Colaboratory Kitchen she has been part of the co-design of the project since 2020 and in the methodological co-design from a transdisciplinary view.

The kitchen is a social place, a common place to gather and connect. It is a place to share not only food, but stories, ideas, aspirations and initiatives. Colaboratory Kitchen is an ongoing mobile and on-site project that brings farmers, scientists, creatives and cooks together around the kitchen table to connect, exchange knowledge and prototype new trans-disciplinary solutions to farming; a test ground for ideas that conciliate land restoration, conservation, food production and better livelihood in farming communities. A response to the lack of connection between disciplines that are key for new alternatives towards more sustainable and just futures.

The questions at stake are: How do we bridge scientific and local knowledge? What kind of interdisciplinary projects can we create towards a better livelihood and ecological resilience of farmer communities? How can we conserve the environment and its biodiversity in balance with sustainable food production and pair local consumption to global demand?

We create a space for a trans-disciplinary community to grow and take action, by sharing and cooking futures together.

The project was initiated in 2016 as a collaboration between Cascoland and the Forefront Project (WUR, UNAM), a joint effort to design spaces and tools of communication and action towards strengthening socio-ecological bonds, south of the Lacandona Jungle, Chiapas, México. Now a days the scheme is being developed in three rural locations in Mexico: Santo Domingo Tomaltepex, Oaxaca, Xochimilco, Mexico City and Loma Bonita, Chiapas, as a collaboration with UNAM, local organizations and a range of collaborations from professionals in different disciplines.