In this talk Catalina Insignares discusses the upcoming book Cancer Ecologies with both of its authors Camila Marambio and Nina Lykke. Together they follow the deep weaving between vitality and death, knowledge of overwhelming toxicity and ancestral learning from kins such as Peatmoss and Diatoms. Queer grief and ecological thinking about death are central to Lykke's and Marambios thought, to which we get a short introduction.
English spoken language.
This talk was published in 2026.
Nina Lykke Professor Emerita, Gender Studies, Linköping University, Sweden, and member of CUHRE (Elite Center for Understanding Human Relationships with the Environment), University of Southern Denmark, is a queerfemme-inist philosopher-poet and writer. For many years, she took part in the building of Feminist Studies in Scandinavia and Europe more broadly. She is co-founder of the international Network for Queer Death Studies, author of numerous books such as Cosmodolphins (2000), Feminist Studies (2010), Vibrant Death (2022), Feminist Reconfigurations of Alien Encounters (2024), and co edited the International Handbook of Queer Death Studies (2026). Her most recent mixed-genre book is Cancer Ecologies. A Queer Femme Portal (2026), co-authored with Camila Marambio.
Camila Marambio Transdisciplinary curator, researcher and writer. Her projects focus on the decolonisation of nature conservation and span the fields of environmental humanities, rights of nature, contemporary art and performance studies. In 2010, she started Ensayos, a long-term collective and nomadic ecocultural practice that began in Karokynká, the large island of Tierra del Fuego, in partnership with the Wildlife Conservation Society of Chile. Camila holds a PhD in Curatorial Practice from Monash University (2019) and two master's degrees: one in Experiments in Art and Politics from Sciences Po (2012) and another in Modern and Contemporary Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies from Columbia University (2004). She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Royal Art Institute in Stockholm as part of The Seedbox: An Environmental Humanities Collaboratory (2021). As guest curator of the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Latin American Art at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), she conceived and moderated the Aconcagua Summit (2020) and edited the booklet El Agua es La Ley (2021). She is currently promoting the protection of peatlands through the implementation of a global agreement, acting as curator of new perspectives at Para la Naturaleza in Borikén, Puerto Rico.
Cancer Ecologies, A Queer Femme Portal by Nina Lykke and Camila Marambio https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/cancer-ecologies-9781350504622/