Episode 199: Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, PhD

Practice You with Elena Brower

On hospicing modernity, an invitation to hold many paradoxical layers of complexity, to stretch your heart, to know vulnerability as your strength.

• (1:00) - Colonialism, identity, and family history.
• (7:10) - Modernity, its definition, and its impact on society, culture, and the environment.
• (16:53) - Modernity, colonialism, and their impact on humanity's mental health and well-being.
• (26:20) - Education, storytelling, and connection to nature.
• (32:50) - Indigenous perspectives on psychology, including the concept of the "bus" representing the multiplicity within the self.
• (39:08) - Modern society's disconnection from nature and self, with a focus on indigenous knowledge and practices for healing and growth.

Dr. Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti has served as a Latinx professor at the University of British Columbia, now Dean of the Faculty of Education of the University of Victoria.

Dr. Andreotti is a former Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities and Global Change and a former David Lam Chair in Multicultural Education. She is the author of Hospicing Modernity: Facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism (2021) and one of the co-founders of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (GTDF) Arts/Research Collective. Most of her published articles and OpEds are available at academia.edu.

She began her career as a teacher in Brazil in 1994 and has since led educational and research programs in countries including the UK, Finland, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Brazil, and Canada.

Andreotti works across sectors in international and comparative education, particularly focusing on global justice and citizenship, Indigenous and community engagement, sustainability, and social and ecological responsibility. Her research examines relationships between historical, systemic, and on-going forms of violence, and the inherent unsustainability of modernity. Andreotti is one of the founding members of Gesturing Decolonial Futures Collective (decolonialfutures.net) and Teia das 5 Curas, an international network of Indigenous communities mostly in Canada and Latin America. She currently collaborates with these groups to direct research projects and learning initiatives related to global healing and wellbeing in times of unprecedented challenges.