New PhD candidate: Sofia Lamadrid Isoard
Welcome to the ETLab, Sofia Lamadrid Isoard!
Sofia has a background in social and cultural anthropology, urban anthropology, and participatory research. Her work has explored the intersection of futures thinking and public life. She has collaborated on projects related to participatory policy design, sustainable mobility, education, and strategic planning across government and academic contexts in Mexico. Her research interests are shaped by experiences of uncertainty, inequality, and collective resilience in contemporary urban life, particularly in Latin America. At the Futures Hub of the ETLab, she is interested in how posthumanist and anthropological approaches can help understand the entangled relationships between workers, technologies, environments, and organisations, while opening space for more hopeful and sustainable future imaginaries.
Sofia's PhD project aims to investigate how construction workers in Australia navigate future scenarios shaped by automation, AI, and environmental transitions. Drawing on posthumanist theory and speculative methods, the research explores workers’ values, hopes, aspirations, concerns, and lived experiences as the construction industry transforms. The project examines how labour might be reimagined beyond productivity and efficiency, asking what more just, relational, and ecologically grounded forms of work could emerge through new relationships between humans, technologies, and environments.