Katleen’s presentation explored how gender-based violence is embedded within the food systems of Montes de María, Colombia, drawing on the experiences of peasant women organised through a local association. The presentation argued that violence should not be understood as an external or incidental factor, but as something that runs through the food system itself, shaping women’s access to land, their labour, and their roles as food producers and agents.
The analysis was situated within decolonial theory and feminist economics, particularly through the concept of the gender colonial matrix of power. This framing showed how present-day violence against rural women is not isolated, but rooted in enduring colonial structures of power. It also allowed the research to connect gendered violence to longer histories of dispossession, racialisation, and the subordination of peasant and rural women’s bodies, knowledge, and livelihoods.
The presentation introduced cuerpo-territorio, or body-territory, as the central conceptual and methodological lens of the study. This approach understands women’s bodies and land as deeply interconnected sites where violence, memory, and resistance are inscribed. Read together with the gender colonial matrix of power, body-territory helped link the analysis of gendered violence to broader questions of land, dispossession, and food security.
During the seminar, Katleen presented her preliminary research questions and methodology, while also reflecting on their feasibility. Feedback from the seminar encouraged further consideration of what could meaningfully be achieved within the available conditions, and what would genuinely serve the women involved in the research.
Overall, the seminar helped sharpen both the conceptual framing and the practical direction of the project. It reinforced the importance of keeping the relationship between the gender colonial matrix of power, body-territory, and food systems at the centre of the research.9
