Ms Francesca Castagnetti
About
Francesca joined the CBCD as a visiting training fellow in 2017-18, while doing a MPhil in Indigenous Studies from the University of Tromsø. She specialised in Indigenous and Food System Studies and has research experience in South Asia, Norway, Italy and Madagascar.
Ethnobotanist and apprentice herbalist, she weaves together the threads of ethnobotany, sound ecology, agroecology, and herding and dairy traditions. Her approach combines political ecology, decolonising methodologies, ethnography, soundscape studies and multimedia outputs and it is centred around multi-species and land-based knowledge, spiritual ecology, and food and health sovereignty. She is also co-founder of HEARTH, The Healing Earth Alliance, a non-profit organisation committed to ethnobotanical research and education.
Projects
2020-2022 , Italy: Biocultural Diversity and Traditional Food Systems of Transhumant Herders. In collaboration with Dario Novellino and La Trappa ecomuseum, Sordevolo.
2021, Italy/Norway: Collaboration with Sámi artist Joar Nango on work exhibited at Centrale Fies, Italy.
2020, Nepal: Independent ethnographic research in far western Nepal recording ethnobotanical knowledge of useful plants; biocultural diversity of household gardens; sacred natural sites; agricultural practices, and the oral literature of the village of Malikarjun in Darchula district. In collaboration with Alex Greene and Jagdish Bhatta, funded by Firebird Foundation.
2019, UK: Report on Sacred Natural Sites, cases from Madagascar, collaboration with The Gaia Foundation, London (Internship)
2017, Madagascar: Seeds of Resistance: Civil Society Organisations, Land rights and Food Sovereignty in Madagascar. A Participatory Research with VOIALA on Communities’ Resistance to Large Land Acquisition Deals (MPhil Research Project). VOIALA Madagascar, member of the network of Slow food Madagascar, deals with reforestation programmes and community garden projects with local indigenous communities and organisations.
Education
University of Tromsø, Norway – MPhil in Indigenous Studies – 2018
Centre for Biocultural Diversity, Kent – Training Fellowship in Ethnobotany – 2017
University of Edinburgh, MA(Hons) in Religious Studies (South Asian Religion & Philosophy) – 2015
Selected Publications
Castagnetti F., Bhatta J., Greene A. (2021). An offering of grain: The agricultural and spiritual cycle of a food system in the Kailash Sacred Landscape, Darchula, far western Nepal. Special issue “Traditional Food Knowledge: New Wine into Old Wineskins?” in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems.
Castagnetti, F. (2019) Lost in Translation/Speaking the Language of the Land: The Quest for a New Environmental Narrative. The Ethnobotanical Assembly. Issue 3.