Ecological-Community Psychology Conversation Series

Join us for the Ecological Community Psychology Conversation Series.

Keynote Speaker: Elybeth Sofia Alcantar, American Indian and Indigenous Studies 2026-2027 Predoctoral Fellow at MSU and PhD Candidate Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin.

This presentation examines the role of collaborative planning praxis to assist in land defense with Indigenous Mixteco populations amidst political and environmental induced displacement. Drawing from Indigenous planning principles and Mixteco politics aligned to Indigenous refusals, Elybeth Sofia Alcantar offers a critical planning perspective on collaborative and insurgent design between Mixteco commissions of communal land and resource management (Bienes comunales) and critical geographers or planners. She reflects on two years of collaborative design and insurgent planning with a Mixteco municipality in Oaxaca, Mexico.

In this presentation, Alcantar proposes that a collaborative planning praxis with Indigenous municipalities must center the goal of defending 'el bien común,' to refute territorial dispossession amidst perceived or ongoing displacement.