Dear colleagues,
please be warmly invited to a seminar with Nicolás Cuvi, Professor at the Latin American
Faculty for Social Sciences (FLACSO) at Quito, Ecuador, and currently a research fellow at
the Centre for Anthropocene History at KTH. Nicolás will present his research on Making,
Unmaking, and Remaking
Amazonia<https://www.kth.se/anthropocenehistory/events/upcoming-events/making-unmaking-and-remaking-amazonia-1.1493897?date=2026-10-23&orgdate=2026-10-05&length=1&orglength=0>:
Friday, October 23, 10:15–12.00
Centre for Anthropocene History, Division of History of Science, Technology and
Environment, KTH
Teknikringen 74 D, 114 28 Stockholm
Making, Unmaking, and Remaking Amazonia
Before the sixteenth century, the Amazon was a densely inhabited, highly diverse
biocultural biome, shaped by millennia of intricate human and non-human entanglements.
This seminar explores the long-term history of this socio-ecological system through three
phases. First, it examines the ”Making” of the Amazon, highlighting the deep historical
co-production of its biocultural landscapes. Second, it dissects the systematic “Unmaking”
of the region, tracing the extractivist vectors that have operated since European contact,
by summarising examples of the centuries of ecosystemic and epistemic dispossession, from
early imperial extraction to contemporary agribusiness. In this Unmaking, the Amazon has
been subjected to a relentless process of dual colonial emptying to construct a tameable
terra nullius: a semiotic depletion that erased local ontologies, languages, and
knowledge, and a material depletion driven by demographic collapse and the metabolic
reorganization of the territory. Finally, the talk explores the “Remaking” of the biome by
emphasising the persistent resistances, agencies, and adaptation strategies of Indigenous
and local communities (and of studies on the Amazon) that highlight possible pathways to a
resilient future.
Nicolás Cuvi is an environmental historian based in Quito, Ecuador, where he is a Senior
Research Professor at the Latin American Faculty for Social Sciences (FLACSO) at Quito,
Ecuador. His work spans the environmental humanities broadly: environmental history,
history of science, urban ecology, and environmental ethics, in the context of the
tropical Andes, the Amazon and Latin America. Nicolás has also served as Lead Author and
Coordinating Lead Author in Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) sixth and seventh assessment cycles.
Welcome!
Sabine
[signature_2409644866]
Dr. Sabine Höhler
Professor of Science and Technology Studies
Head of Department of Philosophy and History
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
School of Architecture and the Built Environment
Department of Philosophy and History
Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment
Teknikringen 74 D
SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
Fon: +46 8 790 87 41
Email: sabine.hoehler@abe.kth.se<mailto:sabine.hoehler@abe.kth.se>
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