{"id":3603,"date":"2026-08-14T20:53:42","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T20:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.gsd.harvard.edu\/mci\/?page_id=3603"},"modified":"2026-08-23T20:26:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T20:26:22","slug":"2025-mci-fellows","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/research.gsd.harvard.edu\/mci\/2025-mci-fellows\/","title":{"rendered":"2025 Fellows"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">2025 Fellows<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-gsd-blocks-accordion-group\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-gsd-blocks-accordion  accordion-block accordion-type-line accordion-icon-type-arrow\"><div class=\"accordion-block__item\" style=\"border-color:#000000\"><button aria-expanded=\"false\" class=\"accordion-block__label\" aria-controls=\"sect_f49971cd-ffd2-4f38-bde7-aeaa8b54e275\" id=\"accordion_f49971cd-ffd2-4f38-bde7-aeaa8b54e275\" style=\"background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000\"><span class=\"accordion-block__label-text\">The Soft Infrastructure: How Textiles Define Mexico\u2019s Spatial Memory and Identity<\/span><span class=\"accordion-block__label-icon accordion-block__label-icon-arrow\"><\/span><\/button><div id=\"sect_f49971cd-ffd2-4f38-bde7-aeaa8b54e275\" role=\"region\" class=\"accordion-block__content\" aria-labelledby=\"accordion_f49971cd-ffd2-4f38-bde7-aeaa8b54e275\" style=\"background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Savalee Tikle and Romina Cordova&#8217;s research centers on textiles as \u201csoft infrastructure,\u201d the cultural, spatial, and economic systems that quietly shape urban and rural life across Mexico. What began as an inquiry into supply chains and material culture shifted, through fieldwork, toward a deeper focus on the social role of textiles, particularly how embroidery and weaving passed through mother-daughter lineages structure women\u2019s autonomy, livelihoods, and intergenerational power&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/research.gsd.harvard.edu\/mci\/the-soft-infrastructure\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"3551\">read more<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-gsd-blocks-accordion  accordion-block accordion-type-line accordion-icon-type-arrow\"><div class=\"accordion-block__item\" style=\"border-color:#000000\"><button aria-expanded=\"false\" class=\"accordion-block__label\" aria-controls=\"sect_1a578718-503e-4c56-b2a2-61fbb3b6bef4\" id=\"accordion_1a578718-503e-4c56-b2a2-61fbb3b6bef4\" style=\"background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000\"><span class=\"accordion-block__label-text\">De la Porqueria al P\u00fablico \/ From Pigsty to Publics<\/span><span class=\"accordion-block__label-icon accordion-block__label-icon-arrow\"><\/span><\/button><div id=\"sect_1a578718-503e-4c56-b2a2-61fbb3b6bef4\" role=\"region\" class=\"accordion-block__content\" aria-labelledby=\"accordion_1a578718-503e-4c56-b2a2-61fbb3b6bef4\" style=\"background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Miriam Hernandez and Gemrisha investigate the contamination of the Yucat\u00e1n Peninsula\u2019s karst aquifer by the region\u2019s pork industry, a project that shifted in direction after repeated access to pig farms, from small operations to major producers like Kek\u00e9n, was denied due to biosecurity protocols and producer wariness stemming from recent regulatory crackdowns&#8230;<a href=\"https:\/\/research.gsd.harvard.edu\/mci\/de-la-porqueria-al-publico-from-pigsty-to-publics\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"3650\">read more<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-gsd-blocks-accordion-group\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-gsd-blocks-accordion  accordion-block accordion-type-line accordion-icon-type-arrow\"><div class=\"accordion-block__item\" style=\"border-color:#000000\"><button aria-expanded=\"false\" class=\"accordion-block__label\" aria-controls=\"sect_2ae77ce9-5b3b-4b12-a947-a04b7562291e\" id=\"accordion_2ae77ce9-5b3b-4b12-a947-a04b7562291e\" style=\"background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000\"><span class=\"accordion-block__label-text\">Clay as Living Archive<\/span><span class=\"accordion-block__label-icon accordion-block__label-icon-arrow\"><\/span><\/button><div id=\"sect_2ae77ce9-5b3b-4b12-a947-a04b7562291e\" role=\"region\" class=\"accordion-block__content\" aria-labelledby=\"accordion_2ae77ce9-5b3b-4b12-a947-a04b7562291e\" style=\"background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">MCI Fellow\u00a0Lys Ot\u00e1rola\u00a0(MUP \u201926) presents her 2025 research arguing that the pottery practice of Oaxaca\u2019s red clay communities constitutes a living archive of design intelligence, a system in which social infrastructure, embodied knowledge, communal governance, and ecological reciprocity are not separate concerns but a single, integrated practice. What the pot teaches planning is that the most durable urbanism is not designed from above and delivered downward. It is built from within, through the commons, through craft, through decisions made across generations, with people rather than material at its center&#8230;<a href=\"https:\/\/research.gsd.harvard.edu\/mci\/clay-as-living-archive\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"3654\">read more.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-gsd-blocks-accordion-group\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-gsd-blocks-accordion  accordion-block accordion-type-line accordion-icon-type-arrow\"><div class=\"accordion-block__item\" style=\"border-color:#000000\"><button aria-expanded=\"false\" class=\"accordion-block__label\" aria-controls=\"sect_d79d9db6-8bba-4272-a21e-3c368563385d\" id=\"accordion_d79d9db6-8bba-4272-a21e-3c368563385d\" style=\"background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000\"><span class=\"accordion-block__label-text\">Lo Que Sabe el Barro: From Clay to Fire<\/span><span class=\"accordion-block__label-icon accordion-block__label-icon-arrow\"><\/span><\/button><div id=\"sect_d79d9db6-8bba-4272-a21e-3c368563385d\" role=\"region\" class=\"accordion-block__content\" aria-labelledby=\"accordion_d79d9db6-8bba-4272-a21e-3c368563385d\" style=\"background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fired by heat and shaped by hand, clay carries within it the memory of the landscapes it comes from. Clay is not a traditional material but an active architectural system: a medium whose physical demands organize space, structure economic life, and shape housing futures at radically different scales. This research by MCI Fellow\u00a0Andrea Martinez\u00a0traces extraction, craft, labor, and reuse across Oaxaca, Saltillo, and Mexico City. Rather than locating rupture between artisanal and industrial practice, it proposes a\u00a0<em>material continuum<\/em>, a framework for understanding how ancestral knowledge is not lost but translated through landscapes, labor, and economies&#8230;<a href=\"https:\/\/research.gsd.harvard.edu\/mci\/lo-que-sabe-el-barro-from-clay-to-fire\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"3818\">read more.<\/a><br><br><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MCI \u201925 Summer Fellows Savalee Jayendra Tikle and Romina Cordova Grados presented their research on textiles as \u201csoft infrastructure,\u201d the cultural, spatial, and economic systems that quietly shape urban and rural life across Mexico.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":203,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3603","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - 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