Manuel Méndez

Biography

I served as an external professor at the Department of Historical and Geographical Sciences, University of Tarapacá, in Arica, Chile, from 2005 to 2010. Subsequently, I held the position of assistant professor at the Department of Geography, University of Chile, in Santiago, Chile, between 2010 and 2013. From June 2013 to September 2014, I worked as an external collaborator monitoring water conflicts between indigenous communities and transnational mining companies in the Andes. This role was with the delegation of the Danielle Mitterrand-France Libertés Foundation at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva (UNOG).

I completed my master's degree in geography at the Université Jean Moulin, Lyon III, from September 2014 to June 2015. From April 2018 to January 2023, I pursued doctoral studies in History (Université de Rennes 2) and Anthropology (Universidad Católica del Norte) as part of the Atacama-SHS project, "Sciences humaines et sociales en territoire minier", conducted by several French and Chilean universities. Between April 2023 and March 2024, I held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile. I have been awarded the "Fondecyt Postdoctoral" fund (2024-2027) from the Chilean National Science and Technology Fund to study the impacts of industrial mining in the Loa River basin, northern Chile.

My research explores the socio-environmental effects of the production of nature as a resource, from the early 19th century to the present day. My recent work fosters an interdisciplinary dialogue amongst history, anthropology, and landscape archaeology, aiming to reconstruct long-standing territorial production processes in the Atacama Desert. Additionally, in collaboration with geographers, historians, and archaeologists, I have developed a comparative perspective between mining territories in the Andes and other regions of the world.