Collaborator

Luiza Prado de O. Martins is an artist, writer, and researcher whose work examines themes around fertility, reproduction, coloniality, gender, and race. Her ongoing artistic research project, A Topography of Excesses, looks into encounters between human and plant beings within the context of herbalist reproductive medicine, approaching these practices as expressions of radical care. Since 2019, she has broadened the scope of this research, developing a body of work that offers a critique of the racist concept of ‘overpopulation’ in the context of the current climate crisis with the project The Councils of the Pluriversal: Affective Temporalities of Reproduction and the Climate Crisis. She is part of the curatorial board of transmediale 2021 and a founding member of Decolonising Design. She is currently based in Berlin, Germany. Ciência Vitae

Mariana Pestana is an architect, researcher and independent curator, exploring critical, social and fictional dimensions of design for an age marked by technological progress and an ecological crisis. Since 2010, she is co-director of The Decorators, an interdisciplinary studio that makes collaborative cultural programmes with the aim to expand notions of place, community and commensality. She holds a PhD in Architectural Design from the Bartlett School of Architecture. In 2018, Mariana co-curated The Future Starts Here (Victoria and Albert Museum) and in 2019 she co-curated Eco Visionários: Arte e Arquitectura Depois do Antropoceno (MAAT, Lisbon, Matadero, Madrid e Royal Academy, London) and edited Fiction Practice: Prototyping the Otherworldly (Onomatopee). Currently, she is the curator of the 5^th Istanbul Design Biennial (2020-21) and works as Assistant Professor of Design at Lusófona University. Ciência Vitae

Justin is a South African field ecologist and nature conservationist. He has a master’s degree from London University and is a PhD candidate at the Nova University School of Science and Technology on the restoration of Natura 2000 habitats. Apart from his studies, Justin also consults on numerous ecological projects in Portugal which are focused on recovering damaged, degraded, and destroyed ecosystems where he employs GIS and ‘drone’ based technologies for unmanned aerial surveys, along with his experience as a field-based practitioner. He is a member of the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) international as well as the SER European chapter. Before coming to Portugal, he worked in a community based natural resource management (CBNRM) project in Niassa, Mozambique for over 10 years – it was here that he met Sofia, his Portuguese wife. Before Mozambique, he worked in the Kruger National Park, as well as other South African National Parks, including various ecological restoration and CBNRM projects throughout southern Africa.