Photo credits: Wiebke Hampel
Paz Araya successfully defended her PhD thesis, Warmth Care in Cold Houses: Negotiations with the Indoor Thermal Environment in Southern Chile.
This thesis explores how people in intermediate cities of southern Chile negotiate cold domestic environments through what I call warmth care — the active, ongoing practices through which thermal well-being is produced and maintained. Drawing on sensory and multimodal ethnography in the Araucanía region, I examine how warmth care is co-constituted with the thermal environment and with gender across four registers: sensorial, material, ethical, and infrastructural. The analysis reveals how thermal sensitivity, material arrangements, feminised care labour, and fragmented infrastructures are simultaneously negotiated in everyday life.
Paz completed her doctorate at the Institute of European Ethnology under the supervision of Ignacio Farías (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Jorgelina Sannazzaro (Universidad Mayor, Chile). The defense took place on 20 March 2026, and the final degree is Magna cum laude.
Congratulations to Paz Araya for her outstanding achievement!
