Cara is working on a project focused on Decolonizing Sustainability Mapping Practices. This is a joint project between the Urban Futures Studio and the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development that looks into applying a decolonial framework to mapping practices with the purpose of better addressing island communities unique sustainable challenges. This project focuses on small island environments and involves participatory mapping, as well as qualitative methods and creative processes to co-design visualizations of local place knowledge.
Cara has always been interested in people and their relationship to place and how factors like gender, migration, and histories of colonisation, impact a community's sense of place. She is interested in how artistic methods of visualization can be used to not only subvert dominant narratives, but imagine alternate ways of being. Before coming to th Netherlands, Cara completed a series of mapping projects in Taiwan, through a Fulbright Fellowship which also funded her Master's in interdisciplinary design. While in Taiwan, she worked closely with migrant workers and Non-govermental organizations to host map-making workshops that visualized relationships to place, migration histories, as well as hopes and desires to make better placemaking suggestions for Taiwan鈥檚 growing migrant worker population.
As a member of the Urban Futures Studio she aims to more closely look into how a decolonial praxis within sustainable development can open the opportunity for more imaginative and inclusive futures.