Eglee Zent: Trekking Among Shallow and Deep Ecologies in the Amazon

During this presentation, Dr. Zent will offer an overview of several learning experiences acquired over 20 years of conducting research in the Amazon region. The challenges of articulating scientific and Indigenous peoples' epistemologies and ontologies have proven to be a complex and winding journey, filled with many trials and errors, but also insights and privileges. This trek between different worlds of understanding and being on the earth has allowed us to present a synthesis of teachings which, though not definitive in any sense, may have the potential to contribute to the development of more integrated (and hopefully effective) biocultural conservation strategies.

Eglee Zent is a current MacMillan Visiting Scholar at the Gund Institute at UVM. She is a Venezuelan scholar with expertise in Indigenous knowledge and biological and cultural conservation. Her eclectic academic background includes anthropology, conservation biology, botany, and art. Since 2000, she has worked at the Human Ecology Lab at the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research. Her lab has conducted applied and theoretical research in two tropical ecological systems in Venezuela: the páramos of the high Andes among the Parameros, and lowland Amazonia among the Jotï, an Amerindian group. These projects are collaborative and participative and have been carried out emphasizing the collective construction of knowledge and the needs of the people involved like their human, health, and territorial rights. Zent’s work is transdisciplinary, with diverse epistemologies, drawing in material and ideological, quantitative and qualitative aspects. Her academic interests could be labelled as human ecology or ethnoecology/ethnobiology. An author of over 70 published texts, Zent is committed to the care and love of the Earth, human and non-human processes and dynamics.

Zent spoke at UVM on Oct. 1st, 2021. Read more about Eglee: https://globalenvironments.org/profile/eglee-zent/

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