The architect of emotions

‘After so many decades of conflict in Columbia, it’s important to understand the close correlation between emotions, disputes and territories’, says Carolina Saldarriaga Cardona from Medellín in Columbia. The architect is currently working on her doctoral thesis entitled ‘Territorial expressions of grieving. Why are emotions important for the territory?’  

Saldarriaga Cardona is a scholarship holder under the Doctoral Studies Support Program (DSSP) promoting Environmental Peace and Development in Colombia and is doing her PhD at the Faculty of Architecture of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. The DSSP deals with ecology promoting peace and development in Columbia and has been developed and implemented since 2017 by the Centre for Development Research at the University of Bonn and the Institute of Environmental Studies at the National University of Colombia in Bogotá. The programme is one of seven SDG Graduate Schools funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst – DAAD). They bolster collaboration among German higher education institutions and their partners in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Their objective is to establish and maintain partnerships that help achieve the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations. 

Saldarriaga Cardona seeks to use her research to demonstrate Colombia's cultural and territorial transformation based on the example of Bajo Atrato. This region in the north west of the country is an ecologically and strategically significant area due to its dense rainforests and fertile soils. Bajo Atrato has therefore since the 1990s repeatedly been a focal point of armed conflicts, displacements and human rights violations. There are international organisations who are currently assisting local communities there to overcome the challenges of reclaiming their habitat and restoring their land rights. Some people may feel that territory is only a piece of land, Saldarriaga Cardona states, but for many it is tightly interwoven with their individual culture and identity. Her research had to pay greater attention to these dimensions.