Renata Ruiz Figueroa

Renata Ruiz Figueroa

Profile

Renata joined LAIC as a Ph.D. student in 2020. She holds a B.A. in History from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Her interests lie at the intersection between agrarian history, environmental humanities, and visual and religious studies. Her research takes a trans-historical approach to explore the relations between the human and the non-human in processes of nation-building and the expansion of capitalist frontiers in Mexico, more recently focusing on the Nahua concept of altepetl (water-mountain) as an ecological complex. She is also interested in the uses of history, the politics of space and time, the history of rural movements and migrations, and the ecology of cloud forests.

In addition, Renata is a member of the Colectivo Tochinanco, a working group that explores the interconnections between language, history, and the environment. Through the development of pedagogic materials, they seek to promote participatory research for linguistic revitalization, local transmission of communitary knowledge, as well as creative engagement. With this project, Renata collaborates with the Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas, A.C. (IDIEZ, or Zacatlan Macehualtlallamiccan, in Nahuatl) and is also affiliated to Columbia’s Center for Science and Society through their Seed Grant program and the Earth Network in Community-driven Co-production of Knowledge.

As a Teaching Fellow at Columbia, she has taught Beginner Spanish II, Intermediate Spanish I, and is currently teaching a section of the course Enlightenment Through Present titled Ecologies of Modernity.