Senate Faculty

Summary of Expertise

I work at the crossing of science and technology studies, feminist theory and the environmental humanities. My most recent book Matters of Care. Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds (Minnesota University Press, 2017) attempts to connect a feminist materialist tradition of critical thinking on care with debates on more than human ontologies and ecological practices. I am currently researching the ongoing formations of novel ecological cultures, looking at how connections between scientific knowing, social and community movements, and art interventions are contributing to transformative ethics, politics and justice in troubled naturecultural worlds. I also look for interstitial spaces of knowing and doing that disrupt seemingly hegemonic technoscientific regimes – in particular everyday forms of ecological care in minoritarian eco-social movements such as permaculture and material spiritualities. With a background in contemporary continental philosophy and constructivist and process philosophies, my earlier work was on feminist epistemologies, the transformations of the politics of knowledge production, scientific practice and technological innovations in the ‘knowledge economy’.

Research Interests

Science and Technology Studies; Environmental Humanities; Feminist theory; Care; Human-Soil relations; Ecological cultures; Decolonial ecologies; Speculative thinking and Fiction; Ecofeminism; Ecological Belonging.

Biography, Education and Training

I joined Histcon in September 2023. 

From 2018 to 2023 I was an Associate Professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, The University of Warwick and from 2010 to 2018 an Assistant and then Associate Professor at the School of Management, University of Leicester (2010-2018). Previously (2008-2010). I have held an UK Arts and Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellowship, an EU Marie Curie Fellowship and  Belgian Government ARC Research Fellowships and have been a research associate at the School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University and visiting scholar at the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University. From 2006-2008 I was a Marie Curie International Research Fellow at the Department of History of Consciousness and the Center for Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz. I started my academic trajectory as an ARC Research Fellow at the department of Philosophy, of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium (1998-2002). I hold a PhD and an MA in Philosophy and an MSc in Transdisciplinary Studies, all from the Université Libre de Bruxelles.

Selected Publications

Monographs and edited volumes

Papadopoulos, Dimitris. Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria, & Tachetti, Maddalena. (Eds.) (2023). Ecological Reparation. Repair, Remediation and Resurgence in Social and Environmental Conflict, Bristol University Press.

Papadopoulos, Dimitris., Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria. & Myers, Natasha. (eds.). (2021). Reactivating Elements Chemistry, Ecology, Practice Duke University Press [ with contributions by Patrick Bresnihan, Timothy Choy, Joseph Dumit, Cori Hayden, Stefan Helmreich, Joseph Masco, Michelle Murphy, Dimitris Papadopoulos, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, Astrid Schrader, Isabelle Stengers] https://dukeupress.edu/reactivating-elements

Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria (2017), Matters of care: speculative ethics in more than human worlds, Posthumanities, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press (258 pages)
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/matters-of-care

Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria (2014) Les savoirs situés de Sandra Harding et Donna Haraway. Science et épistemologies féministes, Paris : L’Harmattan (250 pages)

Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria (2013), Politiques féministes et construction des savoirs. « Penser nous devons ! » Paris : L’Harmattan (246 pages)

Bauchspies, Wenda & Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria (2009), Re-tooling technologies: exploring the possible through feminist science studies, Special issue, Subjectivity 28, Palgrave, September

Rassel, Laurence & Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria, (eds.) (2006), Stitch and split. Bodies and territories in science fiction, Barcelona: Fundación Tapiés

(in preparation) Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria, When the name for world is soil. Transforming human-soil affections across science, culture and community

Journal articles and book chapters

Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria (2019) The re-animation of soil: transforming human-soil relations across science, culture and communityLink opens in a new window. The Sociological Review, 67 (2), 391-407 & The Sociological Review Monographs, Intimate Entanglements (Latimer, J. & Lopez D. eds) - Awarded the 2020 Article of the Year Prize of the Finnish Society for Aesthetics: https://estetiikka.fi/2020/article-of-the-year-2020/222

Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria (forthcoming 2021) Embracing breakdown. Soil ecopoethics and the ambivalences of remediation. In. Papadopoulos, D., & Puig de la Bellacasa, M. Myers, N.,(eds.), Re-Activating Elements. Substance, Actuality, and Practice from Chemistry to Cosmology, Duke University Press.

Robinson, David A., Fiona Seaton, Katrina Sharps, Amy Thomas, Francis Parry Roberts, Martine van der Ploeg, Laurence Jones, Jannes Stolte, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, Paula Harrison, and Bridget Emmett (2017). Soil Resources, the Delivery of Ecosystem Services and Value. In. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria (2015) Making time for soil. Technoscientific futurity and the pace of care, Social Studies of Science, 45 (5), 691-716.

Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria (2014) Encountering bio-infrastructure. Ecological struggles and the sciences of soil. Social Epistemology, 28 (1): 26-40.

Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria (2016), Ecological thinking, materialist spirituality and the poetics of infrastructure. In. Boundary Objects and Beyond. Working with Leigh Star, Bowker, Geoff, Clarke, Adele & Stefan Timmermans (eds.) Cambridge: MIT Press: 47-68.

Latimer, Joanna & Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria (2013), Re-thinking the ethical: Everyday shifts of care in biogerontology, In. Priaulx, Nicky (ed.) Re-theorising the Ethical, Ethics, Law and Society Series, Volume V, London: Ashgate: 153-174.

Selected Recordings

Online talks & Podcasts:

Future Ecologies: Compounds, Breakdown, Reparation, Podcast with Maria Puig de la Bellacasa and Dimitris Papadopoulos, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, Germany, April 21, 2021, Available to listen here: https://burningfutures.podigee.io/9-future-ecologies-compounds-breakdown-reparation and here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7EHCFUWVIynotbBi7aO1dF?si=Bb3Czo7hRWu1H1KaJlPt_A

Critical BreakdownLink opens in a new window, Thinking Through the Crises Lecture series, Amsterdam Research Centre for Gender and Sexuality, Online Lecture Series, 25 March 2021.

When the word for world is soil. Notes on the troubles of ecological belonging, talk at The Understory of the Understory, Serpentine Galleries, 5 December 2020.

Embracing Breakdown - Re-thinking the human soil community with care, Keynote at the Conference of Women and Gender Studies in German-speaking Countries (KEG),“(Re-) Visions. Epistemologies, Ontologies and Methodologies of Gender Studies, FernUniversität, Hagen, 4 July 2019.

Conversation on Matters of Care with Dominic Boyer and Cymene Howe, Cultures of Energy podcast -- 5 July 2018 : Available here

Teaching Interests

Critical, Feminist and Decolonial Science and Technology Studies; Environmental Humanities; Feminist knowledge politics; Care Ethics and Practices; Ecological cultures and thought; More than human relations; Speculative thinking; Geophilosophies.