Danya Nadar
FRICTION Technical Support
Email: danya.nadar@ulb.be
Profile & curriculum
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PhD Candidate Institute of Development Policy (IOB), University of Antwerp (2020 -- present)
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Research Fellow, International Development Research Centre (IDRC-CRDI) (January 2019 -- October 2020)
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Journalist & film producer focused on North Africa and East of the Mediterranean (2009 -- 2017)
Research interests
I am a PhD Candidate at the University of Antwerp and technically assist the FRICTION project housed in the Labo Agroécologie. My work focuses on ways Indigenous peasants use their ancestral ecological knowledges to resist colonial and capitalist encroachments in their territories. I research how different colonial technologies are used in attempting to rupture Indigenous land relations, to later get reworked in different geographies.
Research project
The fusion of technologies that blur the lines between the digital and biological spheres is expected to play a crucial role in the building of climate-smart and resilient food systems. This biodigital convergence is premised on big data collection about farmers’ and consumers’ behaviour, soil and climate conditions, living organisms’ genomic structures, and the growth of plants and animals, in combination with dedicated infrastructures, finance and policy mechanisms. More than a technological transition, biodigitalisation in agriculture is construed as an inescapable revolution that will transform the way societies farm, what farm work looks like and ultimately how life is created and sustained.
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FRICTION - a political agroecology at the encounter of biodigital innovation and farming worlds in Belgium -.brings together the fields of science and technology studies, political ecology and agroecology to study biodigital technologies and related infrastructures, as contested terrains that are indivisible from power dynamics and the longer histories of agricultural modernisation. Developing a genealogical approach, the project lays bare the actors, interests, and sources of authority that come together in the biodigital imperative. More importantly, the project explores what happens when biodigital technologies meet with peasant farmers, an encounter that is all but frictionless.
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Selected publications
Nadar, D., & Casolo, J. J. (2024). Radical Food Geographies Un/Settlings: The Weaponization of Food and its Discontents in Occupied Palestine and the Ch’orti’ Maya East. In C. Hammelman, C. Z. Levkoe, & K. Reynolds (Eds.), Radical Food Geographies (pp. 244–260). Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/10.56687/9781529233445-020
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Nadar, D. (2022). We maintain the land as resistance. In H. Ayeb, M. Alazhar Algharby, & M. Ajl (Eds.), Food dependency across Arab countries: Its roots and dimensions (pp. 228–253). Observatoire de la Souveraineté Alimentaire de l’Environnement (OSAE).
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Nadar, D., & Deaconu, A. (2021). Conversaciones sin fronteras: Reflexiones y aprendizajes cruzados sobre los alimentos tradicionales en redes alternativas de Palestina y Ecuador. In S. Grenoville, J. Le Gall, & J. Noel (Eds.), Distribución, comercialización y acceso a alimentos de calidad en América Latina (pp. 23–44). INTA Ediciones. https://orbi.uliege.be/bitstream/2268/265515/2/INTA_DireccionNacional_EEAAMBA_Grenoville_S_distribucion_comercializacion_acceso_alimentos_calidad.pdf
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