Arantxa Figueroa

Supervisor: Dr. Felipe Hernandez
Email: af839@cam.ac.uk

Biography

Arantxa holds an Architecture Degree and a Master in Cultural Heritage from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, along with several specialisation courses in heritage conservation from Universidade do Minho and the Getty Conservation Institute. Her main interests are related to the preservation of national heritage, with a strong emphasis on contemporary theories about violence in space, as well as the spatial aspects of difficult heritage. She has been part of several teaching and research teams related to cultural heritage, and as of October 2023, she is working towards her PhD with support from Wolfson College and the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge.

Research

Currently, she is a PhD student at the Centre for Latin American Studies, studying the impact of state terrorism in Latin American territories, with a specific focus on buildings and sites used for political repression during the Chilean dictatorship in the 1970s and possible alternatives to their conservation and management as difficult heritage sites, while diving into the contestation of hegemonic narratives regarding these places in postdictatorial Chile.

Research Interests

Political Repression
Spatial Violence
Critical Heritage Studies
Post-preservation
Heritage Conservation
Memory Studies
Necropolitics

Conference Papers

“Territorial traces of state terrorism in Chile. Clandestine centres and heritage conservation practices”. PILAS Annual Conference. Universiteit van Amsterdam, July 2024.
“Violence and Heritage. Post-preservation in Chilean sites of memory”. AMPS London Heritages Conference. University of Greenwich, June 2025.

The Centre

People

What's on

MPhil and PhD

Postdoctoral Research

Visiting Scholars / Fellow

Simón Bolívar Chair

Arantxa Figueroa