Team UFFS in Chapecó, Brazil
The Federal University of Fronteira Sul UFFS is a Brazilian university.
Samira Moretto
South American Environmental History Expert
SoyStories is a project that dialogues with the research I have been developing on Environmental History and the plant movement. In addition to the exchange of plant species, I have been researching the impacts of changes in landscapes after the insertion of monocultures, such as soybean and planted forests. Graduated in History from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (2007), Master in History from the same University (2010), Ph.D. in History from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (2014), with a period at California State University, Long Beach (2013) . Researches and advisor on Environmental History, Domestication and Introduction of species plants, Deforestation, Reforestation, Landscape Transformations, Biodiversity Conservation and History of Brazil Republic, with emphasis on the period from 1964 to recent times.
Claiton Márcio da Silva
Environmental History of Soy Expert
Claiton Marcio da Silva is Associate Professor at the Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul (Brazil); he is researcher in the Soy Stories Project with focus on the history of Soybean expansion in Brazil. Moreover, Professor Claiton is Director of the Soyacene - Socioenvironmental Observatory of the Soybean and editor of "The Age of Soybean: an Environmental History of Soy During the Great Acceleration (2022).
Team TU/e History Lab in Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Eindhoven University of Technology TU/e is a Dutch university.
At TU/e, the History Lab studies the risks and rewards of technology in past, present and future, focusing on sustainability history.
​
Nathaly Yumi da Silva
Cultural Studies Researcher
​‘SoyStories’ resonates with my cultural background and language proficiency, but especially with my desire to contribute to insightful academic research about my home country, Brazil, intertwined with the country that I chose to live in, The Netherlands.
Holding a Master’s in Cultural Studies, I’m especially interested in portray, by situating and not just translating, Brazilian culture, acknowledging a variety of perspectives, challenges, histories and narratives.
Jonas van der Straeten
Historian specialized in technology and material culture
As an academic, I am interested in the stuff that we make and that makes us and that we like to think of as technology. I am fascinated by the way this stuff travels through time and space, especially in the majority world. I have done research (most of it historical) on electricity in East Africa, on building and housing in Central Asia, and – more recently – on transport in South Asia. ‘SoyStories’ takes me to new grounds; geographically, culturally, and intellectually. Hence, as a much as I will be guiding in the project (specifically Nathaly as her co-supervisor), I will be guided by the others when trying to answers to a set of intriguing questions: How to make sense of globally interconnected sustainability issues and the narratives associated with them? How to make history actionable?
Erik van der Vleuten
Trans-national History of Socio-Ecological Transitions Expert and Project Co-Coordinator
For a long time I have studied histories of technological, social and environmental connections in Europe and beyond, notably in the Tensions of Europe/ Making Europe research network and program. For me, Soy Stories is an effort to rethink and pluralize Eurocentric ways of historical knowledge making on technology, society, and environment and its politics, by (a) studying plural situated-yet-connected socio-material histories and futures of diverse regions across the globe, and (b) exploring how to combine notions of transnational, transformative and transdisciplinary historiography. At Eindhoven University of Technology TU/e, I serve as Professor of History of Technology and as Chair of the TU/e History Lab, the Dutch Foundation for the History of Technology SHT, and the newly founded 4TU interuniversity Centre for the History of Technology.
Team VU Athena Institute in Amsterdam, The Netherlands
VU Amsterdam is a Dutch university.
At the VU, the Athena Institute focuses on transdisciplinary research, with an emphasis on global and sustainable approaches.
Caroline Kreysel
Environmental Historian with Heritage Studies training
I am a PhD candidate in the Soy Stories project investigating the environmental history of soy use in the Netherlands. My academic background is in environmental history as well as heritage studies. I am especially interested in more-than-human histories, landscape and land use change and interactions between humans and their environment.
Sjamme van de Voort
Cultural Historian specialised in Memory Studies
Before coming to the Soy Stories team to work on theories and methodologies that connect sustainability historiographies across national and disciplinary borders, I used to be a cultural historian and wrote a PhD about how theories from the field of memory studies could be operationalised to understand communities of migrants. The Cuban-American community in Miami Dade County served as a case study for that research, and the Chilean-Swedish community in Gothenburg, Sweden, as a control-study in a smaller project following the dissertation. As a member of the Soy Stories team, I use this experience of working theoretically and methodologically with people’s perceptions of time and space to build the transdisciplinary tools that we need to work across the many fields that we cover as a group.
Evelien de Hoop
Sustainable Health Researcher, PhD Guide & Project Co-coordinator
In a way, the SOY STORIES project spins a multiplicity of yarns at and between multiple sites across the globe. As researcher, I take part in spinning these yarns as well as studying the process of doing so. As project co-coordinator, together with Erik van der Vleuten and Claiton da Silva, and as PhD guide, I hope to support this process. To do so, I draw upon training in a variety of fields, including bits of STS, human geography, anthropology, and earth- and climate sciences, my more hands-on experience with reflexive transdisciplinary and intervention-oriented research approaches, and earlier research engagements with questions around the pasts, presents and futures of land, (landless) farmers and biofuels in colonial and contemporary India, on the knowledge politics of smart urbanization, and participatory governance of Dutch countryside.
Marjoleine van der Meij
Museum Exhibit Designer and Science Museologist
I am collaborating on the conceptualisation and evaluation of a science museum exhibit for Soy Stories. We will co-create this exhibit with visitors, researchers, story tellers and (science) museum professionals.
Jacqueline Broerse
Transdisciplinary Transformative Research Expert
Jacqueline Broerse works on multi-stakeholder knowledge production for inclusive sustainability transformations in global North, South, and transnational contexts. She leads several large research programs on food system transformation policies in Europe, Africa and South America.
Affiliated Researchers
As a collaborative and transdisciplinary project, Soy Stories has a wide range of affiliated researchers.
This section will try to keep up with the list of people that contribute to our research.