Elena Palma (she/her) is a PhD candidate at the Rachel Carson Center (RCC) for environment and society as part of the doctoral program “Learning Nature” directed by Francesca Mezzenzana. She explores children’s embodied practices, such as water sports, and their role in developing emotional attachment and a sense of belonging to rivers.
She is also working with Dr Mezzenzana on an ethnographic film that focuses on children’s perception of water drought and climate change in Italy. 
Before participating in this program, Elena worked in an environmental education project and in a kindergarten. She studied Cultural Anthropology (MA) and Italian Literature (BA) at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. During the MA she focused on hydraulic projects’ effects on the Pehuenche people in central Chile and started addressing the local practices in relation to rivers. She addressed the local indigenous resistance to new hydraulic projects as a part of a glocal movement in rivers’ defence.

Elena during 2023 participated in the conference of the American Anthropological Association ‘Transition’ in Toronto and in the conference of the Finnish Anthropological Society. She attended the winter school on Collaborative Ethnographies: Researching (with) Affect and Emotions of the Freie Universität of Berlin.

She is currently in fieldwork in the Alto Bio-Bío, Chile.

Elena is an analogue photographer and bookbinder enthusiast. She is also part of the Collettivo Femminista Scledense in Schio, Italy, where she engages in feminist educational projects in schools and peer education.