Ixchel: Building understanding of the physical, cultural and socio-economic drivers of risk for strengthening resilience in the Guatemalan cordillera
Lead Research Organisation:
Northumbria University
Department Name: Fac of Engineering and Environment
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Planned Impact
This project aims to benefit and strengthen capacities of vulnerable populations facing natural hazards and systemic risks and government institutions and civil society orgs. responsible for and working in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in Guatemala. Impact will be achieved through a series of research-into-action activities that bring physical sciences into dialogue with social sciences and humanities as well as indigenous cosmovisions. The significant percentage (over 20%) of the budget requested for these innovative activities also reflects their importance within the project design. This proposal has been co-developed with Guatemalan investigators and stakeholders, ensuring knowledge production with end users and grounding in the local context, thus increasing its potential to generate impact in the short, and long term. Co-designed engagement and impact activities include:
1) Three project workshops in Guatemala that will bring together scientific, government, intergovernmental, civil society, private sector and community representatives. These will provide a space for exchange and assessment of the research methods, questions and results and a discussion of pathways to embed that knowledge in practice at the policy level. We will also coordinate a dialogue-focused symposium to share our results and invite collaborators from other GCRF projects, to strengthen interdisciplinary and cross-organisational dialogue around DRR priorities.
2) Data collection will take place through a series of interdisciplinary workshops, participatory art and ethnographic research designed to give voices to indigenous and marginalised peoples and acknowledge different knowledge practices and ways of representing risk. This will produce new knowledge about hazards and risk and useful tools to help respond to them (maps, evacuation routes and plans).
3) The capstone docunovela will have multiple forms of impact, both as a process and as a final text. By dealing with the question of risk in a way that takes account of the multiple geographies at play in Guatemala, it will speak to different audiences, not only communities at risk, but also government agencies and emergency managers, development practitioners, hazard scientists and Guatemalan ladino elites. It will put urgent debates on the political agenda and will function as an advocacy and mobilising tool. We will seek to export it to other countries so that its benefits can proliferate globally.
4) Capacity strengthening activities for this project take place at all levels of our engagement with stakeholders. By the end of the project, the government institutes responsible for hazard monitoring, assessment and emergency response will be able to use a range of tools and methods that will outlast the project duration and improve their capacity in the short and long term. Local communities will also have enhanced capacities and be trained in research methods including ethnographic methodologies and knowledge exchange. To ensure lasting impact this project will also engage with the higher education sector in Guatemala. During the technical visits from UK researchers, we plan to impart two short courses targeted at undergraduate students and researchers associated with risk management, to strengthen long-term physical and socioeconomic resilience.
Our findings will be presented in academic papers and reports in Spanish, Mayan languages and English. The promotion and dissemination of research results and methodologies in different languages has the long-term potential to benefit institutions in Guatemala and those working with populations at risk in similar contexts elsewhere.
To monitor and evaluate project impact we plan to apply the Theory of Change methodology. We have drafted an initial version for the proposed project and we will further co-develop this strategy with representatives of key stakeholder groups who will be invited to participate in this exercise at the first workshop.
1) Three project workshops in Guatemala that will bring together scientific, government, intergovernmental, civil society, private sector and community representatives. These will provide a space for exchange and assessment of the research methods, questions and results and a discussion of pathways to embed that knowledge in practice at the policy level. We will also coordinate a dialogue-focused symposium to share our results and invite collaborators from other GCRF projects, to strengthen interdisciplinary and cross-organisational dialogue around DRR priorities.
2) Data collection will take place through a series of interdisciplinary workshops, participatory art and ethnographic research designed to give voices to indigenous and marginalised peoples and acknowledge different knowledge practices and ways of representing risk. This will produce new knowledge about hazards and risk and useful tools to help respond to them (maps, evacuation routes and plans).
3) The capstone docunovela will have multiple forms of impact, both as a process and as a final text. By dealing with the question of risk in a way that takes account of the multiple geographies at play in Guatemala, it will speak to different audiences, not only communities at risk, but also government agencies and emergency managers, development practitioners, hazard scientists and Guatemalan ladino elites. It will put urgent debates on the political agenda and will function as an advocacy and mobilising tool. We will seek to export it to other countries so that its benefits can proliferate globally.
4) Capacity strengthening activities for this project take place at all levels of our engagement with stakeholders. By the end of the project, the government institutes responsible for hazard monitoring, assessment and emergency response will be able to use a range of tools and methods that will outlast the project duration and improve their capacity in the short and long term. Local communities will also have enhanced capacities and be trained in research methods including ethnographic methodologies and knowledge exchange. To ensure lasting impact this project will also engage with the higher education sector in Guatemala. During the technical visits from UK researchers, we plan to impart two short courses targeted at undergraduate students and researchers associated with risk management, to strengthen long-term physical and socioeconomic resilience.
Our findings will be presented in academic papers and reports in Spanish, Mayan languages and English. The promotion and dissemination of research results and methodologies in different languages has the long-term potential to benefit institutions in Guatemala and those working with populations at risk in similar contexts elsewhere.
To monitor and evaluate project impact we plan to apply the Theory of Change methodology. We have drafted an initial version for the proposed project and we will further co-develop this strategy with representatives of key stakeholder groups who will be invited to participate in this exercise at the first workshop.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Kevin Glynn (Principal Investigator) |
| Description | 1. The political distribution of vulnerabilities in Guatemala can be illuminated via its radical contextualization through the forms of conjunctural and decolonial analysis developed over decades within cultural studies and cognate areas of critical theorization and empirical study. 2. Hegemonic discourses of "resilience" are articulated through deeply racialized neoliberal ideological and power/knowledge formations, but empirical engagement suggests they can be disarticulated, rearticulated and renarrativized in ways that promote and serve the interests of subordinated and marginalized survivors of coloniality, neoliberalism, and other disasters. 3. Disaster risk reduction in Guatemala is articulated with various forms of coloniality, including Eurocentric knowledge, patriarchal racism, uneven land tenure rights, corruption, and the legacies of the armed conflict (1960-1996) in which hundreds of thousands of Indigenous and poor ladino people were massacred or forced to flee the country. |
| Exploitation Route | Our film and TV series will advance the interrogation of the social forces of domination identified in the key findings described above. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy Creative Economy |
| Description | The project is working with an NGO, Fundación Ixcancul, a film production company, Casa de Producción, and leading Guatemalan director, Jayro Bustamante (Temblores, Ixcanul, La Llorona), to produce a high-budget feature film and TV series, Cordillera de Fuego, which is about a volcanic eruption in an Indigenous community and seeks to foreground Indigenous knowledges and experiences, and to interrogate and unsettle tired disaster tropes and hegemonic discourses of vulnerability and resilience. The aim is to produce a set of high-impact media texts that will circulate widely through festivals, cinemas and TV and invite civic engagement involving a variety of stakeholders and participants such as community members and leaders. Location filming was completed in 2022 and has already provided training and employment opportunities for many Guatemalan community members and film and media actors, crew members and other professionals. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2022 |
| Sector | Creative Economy |
| Impact Types | Cultural Societal Economic |
| Description | Julie Cupples, Charlotte Gleghorn, Kevin Glynn, and Racquel Ribeiro, "Cordillera de Fuego: Dramatizing Indigenous Engagements with Volcanic Landscapes in the Wake of the Colonial State." Delivered at Cities on Volcanoes 12 (competitive), 11-17 February 2024, Antigua, Guatemala. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Conference presentation. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://congress.iavceivolcano.org/ |