The Vega Symposium | SSAG | Svenska Sällskapet för Antropologi och Geografi

The Vega Day 2025

Professor Marisol de la Cadena at the University of California Davies will be awarded the Vega Medal in Gold by the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography (SSAG). Marisol is a Peruvian anthropologist who has made important contributions to research on indigenous peoples in South America. On the Vega Day, April 24, the Swedish Royal Family will present the medal, followed by an open lecture.

Marisol de la Cadena’s theories have inspired anthropologists all over the world. In addition to her academic work, she has also been involved in social justice issues in Peru.
– Marisol’s research mainly concerns indigenous peoples’ rights to be with their land in South America but is also relevant in the Global North. In northern Sweden and Sapmi, industrial investments are once again being made with arguments about the green transition. It can be compared with the colonialism of the past, says Madeleine Bonow, Associate Professor of Geography at Södertörn University and chair of SSAG.

Marisol is known for her ethnographic research on how indigenous peoples in the Andes interact with the environment and surroundings. The knowledge and attitudes of indigenous peoples challenge Western perceptions about the relationship between nature and culture.
– Both anthropology and geography are moving away from the idea that humans and nature are two separate categories. In the past, anthropologists were the colonial avant-garde. They traveled to different places to investigate ‘others’ to offer colonial powers ideas about how to ‘better them’. Nowadays, anthropology is a field of study that can challenge the dominant Western views of the world. We do this by learning from non-Western people, who refuse the capitalist organization and destruction of the world, says Professor Marisol de la Cadena.

The Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography awards the Vega Medal every year. It takes place on the anniversary of the arrival of the ship Vega in Stockholm on April 24, 1880. Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld’s Vega Expedition was the first in the world to sail through the Northeast Passage in the Arctic Ocean between Europe and Asia. The expedition is considered to be among the foremost Swedish scientific successes. King Oskar II financed the expedition together with SSAG. As SSAG’s patron, it is still the King who awards the Vega Medal.

The Vega Symposium 2025 will take place on April 24 at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden. In an open lecture, Marisol will present her research to the public, together with other invited researchers. The event is free and open to all.

Contact Person
Madeleine Bonow, Associate Professor in Geography at i and chair of SSAG.
E-mail: madeleine.bonow@sh.se
Telephone: +46 8 608 47 08

Press release (pdf)

Marisol de la Cadena is a Peruvian anthropologist who has made significant contributions to the anthropology of Indigenous peoples and the environment, theoretically situated at the intersection of Science and Technology Studies (STS), feminist theory, and political ecology. Her research spans studies on multi-species (or multi-entity) relations, politics, religion, history, and world anthropologies. Her academic work, published in both Spanish and English, has gained her considerable international recognition, and her theories have inspired anthropologists across the Global South and the Global North, including Sweden.

De la Cadena is perhaps best known for her ethnographic research in Latin America, primarily focusing on the cultural and political practices of Indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Andes. Early in her career, she gained attention for her groundbreaking article ”Women Are More Indian: Ethnicity and Gender in a Community Near Cuzco” (1991 in Spanish, 1995 in English), in which she problematizes ethnicity from a gender theory perspective. In her book Indigenous Mestizos (2000), she analyzed how the concepts of race and culture have become intertwined in Peru and how Indigenous communities have fought for recognition and visibility in a racialized society.

Her book Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice Across Andean Worlds (2015) explores how Andean peoples interact with the environment and other non-human entities, particularly in the context of the expansion of neo-extractivism. It also examines how their knowledge and practices challenge Western conceptions of the nature-culture relationship. She has coined the term “onto-epistemic openings” and developed an ethnographic-philosophical method that has contributed to the so-called ontological turn in anthropology. The volume A World of Many Worlds (2018), which she co-edited with philosopher Mario Blaser, investigates the possibilities that emerge from dialogues between Indigenous peoples and the philosophy of science. This book, featuring contributions from scholars such as Alberto Corsín Jiménez, Marianne Lien, Isabelle Stengers, Marilyn Strathern, and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, explores how diverse knowledges and practices create opportunities for a pluriverse: a cosmos composed of diverging political practices that can coexist.

De la Cadena’s latest and ongoing research project, Making Cow, is an anthropological study of the practices, politics, and socio-ecological effects of the cattle industry, based on ethnographic fieldwork in Colombia.

Beyond her academic work, de la Cadena has been actively engaged in issues of social justice in Peru and around the world. She has been a prominent voice in public debates advocating for Indigenous rights regarding resource exploitation, megaproject construction, and other environmental and developmental issues.

Born and raised in Peru, de la Cadena completed her undergraduate degree in anthropology at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in Lima, followed by advanced studies in France and England. She earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1996. Since 2010, she has been a professor of anthropology and, since 2017, a professor of STS, both at the University of California, Davis. She is also an affiliated researcher at the University of Western Sydney.

As a scholar who has built her career in the Global North, she has consistently worked to build and maintain connections with academia in the Global South through various collegial collaborations and visiting professorships, primarily in Latin America. She has also been an advocate for interdisciplinary collaborations and for anthropology’s role in influencing societal development.