WOL Dissemination Activities in the Atacama Desert

As part of the closing phase of the Worlds of Lithium project, a key dissemination and co-learning activity took place in San Pedro de Atacama in July 2025. Organized by the Principal Investigator (PI) in close collaboration with Marina Weinberg, the project’s coordinator in Chile, this initiative was central to the project's commitment to return knowledge and foster dialogue with actors in the territories where fieldwork was conducted.

The activity consisted of a two-week doctoral seminar within the PhD Program in Anthropology at the Instituto de Investigaciones Arqueológicas y Museo (IIAM), Universidad Católica del Norte—a key institutional partner for the project’s success in the Atacama Desert. The seminar brought together Atacameño leaders, international PhD students, researchers from Rapa Nui, and other local actors engaged in critical reflections on energy transitions, lithium extraction, and territorial knowledge.

Rather than a conventional dissemination workshop, this event functioned as a collaborative space for co-construction of insights and reflection, in which project results were discussed, challenged, and enriched through grounded, plural, and locally situated perspectives.

This activity exemplifies the Worlds of Lithium project's broader approach to research dissemination: one that privileges reciprocity, inter-disciplinarity, and respectful engagement with communities whose lives and territories are entangled in planetary transitions. It also reflects the ERC’s vision of fostering transformative knowledge exchanges beyond academic audiences.