Post doctoral scientist: doctor Clara de La Hoz Del Real

Clara De La Hoz Del Real is a sociologist and researcher at CEARC, Université de Versailles Saint-Qentin-en-Yvelines, whose work explores how people and communities make sense of profound social and environmental change. Her research focuses particularly on questions of power, inequality, identity and the ways in which dominant representations shape how situations of crisis and uncertainty are understood and addressed.

Within PREFER, Clara contributes to the project’s investigation of local terminal risks and the moral and social processes through which people confronted with major disruptions interpret what is happening to them, what matters, and what futures remain possible. Her priority field country is Colombia, and her main field site is the rural municipality of San Miguel de Sema, where she explores these questions through sustained engagement with local experiences, narratives and ways of understanding change.

Her research draws on qualitative and ethnographic approaches, with particular attention to narratives, lived experience and processes of identification. This work has led her to investigate environmental disasters and their aftermath, including research with communities affected by the 2010–2011 floods in Colombia. Her doctoral research examined the social consequences of temporary displacement and the ways in which affected populations negotiate identity, dignity and social relations in the aftermath of disaster.

Clara has also developed a sustained research relationship with Colombia and Latin America, including through her collaboration with the Instituto Pensar at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá. Her work combines empirical research with a broader interest in the politics of knowledge: who has the authority to describe a situation, whose experience becomes visible, and how alternative accounts can challenge dominant ways of understanding social and environmental change.

Through PREFER, she brings these questions to the study of terminal situations, contributing to an approach that takes seriously people’s own interpretations of what is at stake in uncertain and potentially transformative circumstances.