Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society
print


Breadcrumb Navigation


Content
Francesca Mezzenzana

Dr. Francesca Mezzenzana

Freigeist Fellow

PI, research group “Learning ‘Nature’: A Cross-Cultural Ethnography of Children’s Relationships to the Non-Human World

Francesca Mezzenzana is an anthropologist working with the Runa of the Ecuadorian Amazon. She has a PhD in anthropology from the London School of Economics and is currently the Principal Investigator of a Volkswagen Foundation Freigeist Grant, based at the Rachel Carson Center, that explores children’s understanding of the natural world in different cultural settings. Francesca is particularly interested in indigenous practices of learning, child moral socialisation, and human-nonhuman relationships. Her research was awarded funding by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the European Research Council, the Musée du quai Branly, and the National Geographic Society.

RCC Research Project: “The Natural World” and the Shaping of Subjectivity


Selected Publications:

  • “Between Intention and Thought: Individualism and Responsibility in Amazonian Child-rearing.” American Anthropologist 122, no. 3 (2020): 540–535. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13345.
  • “Encountering Supai: An Ecology of Spiritual Perception in the Ecuadorian Amazon.” Ethos 46, no. 2 (2018): 275–295.
  • “Moving Alike: Movement and Human–Nonhuman Relationships among the Runa (Ecuadorian Amazon).” Social Anthropology 26, no. 2 (2018): 238–252.
  • “Difference Revised: Gender and Transformation among the Amazonian Runa.” Ethnos 83, no. 1 (2017): 1–20.
  • “‘Doing it like Real Runa Women and Men’ A Runa Ceremonial Festival.” Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America 12, no. 1 (2014): 61–79.