Anita Lateano

Anita Lateano is a PhD student within the School of Architecture and Cities at the University of Westminster. Using anthropological enquiry, her doctoral research explores coral reef restoration practices in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, home to a number of coral restoration projects, and an area famed globally as a site of high coral reef biodiversity. 

Across Indonesia, coral reef conservation practices are organised by a diverse range of governmental, NGO, private and community-led organisations, but less than a fifth of them have any kind of post-installation monitoring framework (Razak et al. 2022). Through this research, this new industry will be approached anthropologically, to understand the impacts of coral reef conservation within the communities present. Taking a multispecies approach, to take seriously the role of the reef itself in conservation, alongside marine scientists, NGOs, governments, local and Indigenous communities, private and community-led organisations and visitors and tourists to offer new perspectives on an emerging industry, questioning, and exploring, what is meaningful coral reef restoration, and how can we work together to achieve it. 

More broadly, her research interests include exploring environmental epistemologies, social and environmental justice, decolonisation, multispecies approaches, and interdisciplinary and arts-based methodologies. Alongside her PhD research project, Anita is a Knowledge Exchange and Impact Fellow at the University of Surrey, working on the ACCESS project to advance and champion social sciences in environmental and climate-related research, policy and practice. 

For details of all my research outputs, visit my WestminsterResearch profile.