Rebecca Jarman
2025-2026
François Chevalier
University of Leeds
Moving Mountains: Living with Geological Disasters in the Andes and Beyond
I am a Professor of Humanities at the University of Leeds and have worked in Venezuela, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, and the UK. In 2021, I was awarded an AHRC Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship for a project called Moving Mountains that documents the long-term legacies of geological disasters at sites across the Americas and Europe. This interdisciplinary collaboration explore show these planetary forces give shape to life-systems, cosmologies, political economies, and social structures. We champion participatory engagement, creative methodologies, practise-led research, and strong community relationships. This project followed on from my doctoral research on urban poverty in Venezuela undertaken at the University of Cambridge. I am author of Representing the Barrios (University of Pittsburgh Press., 2023). I have published widely in major international journals including Textual Practice, Modern Language Review and Bulletin of Latin American Research. I have also appeared on mainstream media platforms including BBC 5 Live, ABC News, BBC World Service, BBC History Magazine, and TRT World.
Projet de recherche
Moving Mountains examines the legacies of catastrophic landslides caused by tectonic activity, volcanic eruptions, extractive practices, and the effects of a changing climate. My research fosters an innovative approach to the study of disasters by framing mountains as geological agents that intervene actively in ecosystems and landslides as cyclical events that disturb chronological timeframes. I intend to use this residency to develop three principal strands of this broader research project: 1) to draft a book chapter for a monograph, tentatively titled Landforms: Making Life with the Movements of Mountains; 2) to organize a film cycle on environmental crises and social justice, featuring The End of the World, for which I am executive producer; and 3) to continue archival research for an article titled ‘In Aid of our Sister Republic: Fundraising and the Hispanic Arts after the 1970 Peruvian Earthquake’.
Sélection de publications
2025. “Capturing Extraction: Geology, Photography, Industry and Institutional History in the Bingley Archive”, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 44, pp.198-219.
2024. Nosotros, los Andes, Bogotá, Artificio. Eds. Rebecca Jarman and Victoria Vargas-Downing.
2023. “When Worlds Converge: Geological Ontologies and Volcanic Epistemologies in Colombian Literature after the 1985 Eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz”, Textual Practice, 7(12), pp.2023, 1932-1962.
2023. Representing the Barrios: Culture, Politics, and Urban Poverty in Twentieth-Century Venezuela, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press.
2023. “Domestic Crises, International Opportunities: Trends and Preoccupations in New Venezuelan Cinema”, Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies, 7(2), pp.215-244.
