Please join us as we welcome Elena-Daniela Ana, Postdoc, AIAS-AUFF Fellow, Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies.

The event is open to everyone with no prior registration needed. Coffee and tea will be provided. 

For more information about Elena-Daniela and her research, please click here.

Abstract

This talk explores how soil conservation is governed in Romania’s drought-prone Baragan Plain, a major EU grain region on the front line of climate change. Drawing on ethnography, archival research, and policy analysis, this talk will uncover several historical “soil management regimes” spanning frontier expansion, socialist industrialization, and EU-era conservation. These regimes have repeatedly redefined what soil is worth and how it should be treated. Ethnographic attention to these layered histories reveals how present-day governance both reproduces past vulnerabilities and opens possibilities for more just and ecologically-grounded futures.