Supervisors: Dr Pilar Riaño-Alcalá + Dr. Mark Harris

romina.tantalean@alumni.ubc.ca

M.A., Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, UBC
Degree in Law, University of San Martin de Porres (USMP), Peru (2013)

Biography

Romina Tantaleán-Castañeda is a Ph.D. student in Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice and has completed her Master’s in the same program. She is a queer cis-woman from Peru, a lawyer by training specialized in human rights and public policy, and co-founder of Warmipura. Her dissertation centres on a collaborative research process with Amazonian Indigenous peoples, particularly with Indigenous women’s territorial defenders in the context of extractivism, eco-territorial conflicts, and climate environmental-related injustices in the Amazon, while centering and prioritizing Indigenous ontologies and knowledges, and co-mobilizing “the Rights of Nature”.

During her Master’s studies, Romina conducted a research process as a Healthy City Scholar for the City of Vancouver (through the UBC Sustainability Program) in order to develop a high-level equity approach to inform the new 2021 City of Vancouver’s Equity Framework through an intersectional analysis with decolonization and reconciliation, racial and gender equity as a basis. Before starting graduate school, Romina worked in her country for more than seven years in the public sector (e.g., the Peruvian Government, the Congress of the Republic of Peru and the Peruvian Ombudsperson Office) and in the nonprofit sector (e.g., DEMUS) as a legal/policy specialist and advisor in the area of human rights, gender equity/equality, and gendered violence, including advocacy and oversee on the rights of Indigenous peoples and giving advice to grass-roots and local organizations on a range of issues. She also led and participated in policy making and analysis, including supporting the design, implementation and evaluation of policies and development projects, particularly in culturally diverse settings.

Her master’s research project aimed to critically understand the Peruvian State’s relationship with intersecting forms of gendered violence and inequalities during Peru’s internal armed conflict (1980–2000) and peacetime (2000–2019), through a state-centred analysis combining historicization with a prioritization of power, decolonial feminisms and intersectionality. Her research included a case study of the 2009–2015 National Plan against Violence toward Women, reflecting upon its vision and success as well as limitations and constraints.

Inspired by the Zapatista invitation for the pluriverse, her ethical, affective and political commitments lie in des-investing from and hospicing modernity/coloniality given our collective entanglements, immersion and different implications in times of intensifying social and ecological global crises.

Research

The questions that inform my project began through my experiences as a human rights lawyer and policy specialist in Peru. My work as an advocate for Indigenous peoples’ and women’s rights helped develop my political awareness of a state-based imposition of an extractivist model on Indigenous territories, with distinct implications for Indigenous women. By aspirating to conduct decolonial research, this project centers on collaborative processes with Amazonian Indigenous women’s territorial defenders, prioritizing women’s knowledges, leadership, voices, and context. Thus, guided by Indigenous women’s voices and leadership, this collaborative project will focus on three areas: Amazonian Indigenous-state relations around extractivism, Amazonian Indigenous political resistances against state-led extractivist projects, particularly women’s, and Politicized allyship/comradeship with Indigenous women’s territorial defenders. This study particularly centers on the Asheninka peoples’ ontological struggles in defense of life and ecologies through politicized allyship.

Selected Publications

• Romina Tantaleán-Castañeda. (2019). Equity and Justice Transformations. City of Vancouver. Author, principal researcher.
  https://sustain.ubc.ca/sites/default/files/2019-69_Equity%20and%20Justice%20Transformations_Tantalean.pdf

• Tantaleán-Castañeda. (2020). Gender, race and power: examining the Peruvian state’s relationship with intersecting forms of violence and inequalities (1980-2019). University of British Columbia. Master’s Thesis. Author, principal researcher. https://open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0387337

• Maruja Barrig. (2021). Challenges of female employment in the Peruvian forestry sector: a first approximation. National Forestry and Wildlife Service (SERFOR). Research Assistant.

• Ministry of Labor and Employment Promotion, Peru. (2018).  Sectoral Plan for Equality and Non-Discrimination in Employment and Occupation 2018-2021. Ministry of Labor and Employment Promotion. Co-author and legal researcher.

• Program of Indigenous Peoples in the Environmental, Public Services and Indigenous Peoples. Office, Ombudsperson’s Office of Peru. (2017).  Conditions to guarantee the right to education, health and a life free of violence for indigenous girls and adolescents. Ombudsperson’s Office of Peru. Co-author and researcher.

Awards

• The University of British Columbia, Public Scholars Initiative (PSI), cohort 2022-2023
• Charlotte Douglas Fee Award, Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice
• The University of British Columbia, Four Year Doctoral Fellowship – 4YF (September 2020 – August 2024)
• The University of British Columbia (September 2017 – Present): International Tuition Award, Faculty of Arts Graduate Award & President’s Academic Excellence Initiative PhD
• Peruvian Government (September 2017 – August 2019): Reto Excelencia Credit Program, borrower and beneficiary for studying the MA in Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia
• Fifteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability, UBC Robson Square, Vancouver, Canada. Emerging Scholar Awardee 2019
• Fourth Course of Management of International Cooperation Projects PCM – Project Cycle Management), Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Fellowship granted by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), March 2016
• Course: “Women and International Human Rights Law” – Washington College of Law, American University, Washington DC, US. Fellowship granted by the Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Academy and Netherlands Institute, May 2011
• University of San Martin de Porres (January – May 2011). Fellowship for the Internship at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Washington DC, US

Graduate Supervision

Dr. Mark Harris and Dr. Pilar Riaño-Alcalá