BA in Sociology (2022) and MA in Research Methodology in Social Sciences: Innovations and Applications (2024) at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). I am currently working as a doctoral researcher at the Care and Preparedness in the Network Society (CareNet) group of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) of the Open University of Catalonia (UOC).

As a sociologist interested in science and technology studies (STS), my research focuses on how technoscientific devices and infrastructures are activated by what we say and do in everyday life. Based on this approach, my doctoral thesis project (Tentacular territories: octopus aquaculture and the coastal landscape as matters of care, PhD Programme in Society, Technology and Culture, UOC) is interested in the controversies about animal and territorial care around octopus aquaculture.

After years of research, technical innovations in aquaculture have made it possible to close the breeding cycle of the octopus outside its natural habitat. This has made possible  octopus to be farmed rather than caught and, in turn, for aquaculture-based industries to introduce octopus as a product into the food market.

This scenario has sparked  ethical doubts and contradictions about the implications in animal and territorial care of implementing such technical innovations. Some arguments point that such innovations would be careful as they would increase access to octopus food (increasing the wealth of coastal populations or reducing the extractive pressure on wild fishing grounds), whilst others dispute that such innovations could be careful. These other arguments claim that the innovations in aquaculture could inflict pain on an animal as intelligent as the octopus and damage an ecosystem as fragile as the coast. 

Thus, the multiple ethical challenges that the emergence of these technical innovations is opening are being discussed while the transformations that they could bring into the industries involved in the production, marketing and consumption of seafood are also being speculated. This leads the different actors involved in the phenomenon to reflect on whether it would be possible to consume octopus from aquaculture in an engaged and responsible manner, conceiving the animal and the ecosystem as matters of care.

In this way, my doctoral thesis project is articulated around two main issues. Firstly, it studies  the discourses and practices of care regarding the production and/or commercialisation of the aquaculture octopus by the different actors involved in the phenomenon. Secondly, it inquires o n the specific practices of care in the production and/or commercialisation of this type of octopus that legitimise its consumption or non-consumption as food.

Furthermore, this work connects to my family ties in the Rías Baixas. I feel concerned with the articulation of the discourses and practices of octopus care in this geographical space. From a situated and relational multi-species approach, the project is engaged with the knowledge that emanates from the relationships established between the different human and non-human beings that cohabit this coastal space, especially when it comes to designing communal ways of living and collectively negotiating the ecosystemic crises that affect them.

I currently live between Barcelona, Madrid and Vigo.

• Care
• Science and technology studies
• Multispecies studies
• Coastal landscapes