Affective atmospheres of care and exclusion in community gardens
Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand
From a feminist perspective, my PhD explored how community gardens promote more horizontal spatial relations among multiple actors, attentive to more-than-human agency and extending beyond gender. Drawing on qualitative mixed methods, particularly more-than-representational approaches, I examined the embodied, affective, emotional, and multisensory practices of volunteers in three community gardens in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. The research unpacked how relations emerging from pre-cognitive responses to gardens’ materialities co-create affective atmospheres that challenge Cartesian binaries and dominant patriarchal, exploitative discourses. I argued that these atmospheres - of creativity, safety, tranquillity, and empowerment - facilitate subjective meaning-making, raise gender awareness, and foster an ethics of care that enables dynamics of (co)becoming between humans, non-humans, and place. In doing so, this research contributes to debates on urban green spaces and advances innovative methodologies for exploring embodied and non-discursive forms of knowledge production, while also revealing multi-level practices of care and exclusion.
For this work, I received the 2023 Student Award and the 2024 President's Award for Best Doctoral Thesis both from the New Zealand Geographical Society. As an acknowledgement of my research outcomes and diffusion, I also received the 2024 Annual Award for New and Emerging Scholars sponsored by Gender, Place & Culture.
Related publications and engament activities
Braga Bizarria, M. T. (Forthcoming: June 2026). Exploring the ‘Northern’ field(s): A Brazilian’s composted reflexivity statement from down under. In I. Abasli, A. El Assal, & Y. Hafez (Eds.), Global South Researchers in Development Studies: Positionality, Power, and Vulnerability. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Braga Bizarria, M. T. (Forthcoming: July 2026). Engaging people through art in urban (agri)culture. In J. Teasdale, G. Baldacchino, & A. Baldacchino (Eds.), Isolation and Imagination: The Pleasures and Perils of Island Gardening. International Small Islands Study Association (ISISA).
Braga Bizarria, M. T. (2025). Reassessing (en)gendered responsibilities for care through community gardening in Aotearoa New Zealand. Gender, Place & Culture. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2025.2541173
Braga Bizarria, M. T. (2023). Affective atmospheres of care in community gardens: Women’s embodied practices of (co)becoming in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand [Doctor of Philosophy in Geography, Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington]. https://doi.org/10.26686/wgtn.23823114
Braga Bizarria, M. T., Palomino‐Schalscha, M., & Stupples, P. (2022). Community gardens as feminist spaces: A more‐than‐gendered approach to their transformative potential. Geography Compass. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12608
Braga Bizarria, M. T. Community gardens as infrasecular spaces: the agency of more-than-humans in gardeners' experiences of the sacred. 2025. (Conference paper abstract)
Braga Bizarria, M. T. Gardening as a (co-)creative method for exploring more-than-humans’ agency in/and participants’ reflexivity. 2025. Creative Research Methods Symposium - University of Brighton.
Braga Bizarria, M. T. Affective atmospheres of care and exclusion in urban gardens: the complexities of human and more-than-human encounters. 2024. (Conference paper abstract)
Braga Bizarria, M. T. Engaging affect: reflexivity upon relational practices of (co)becoming during fieldwork. 2024. (Conference paper abstract)
Braga Bizarria, M. T. Spatialised practices of care in community gardens in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. 2022. (Conference paper abstract)
Braga Bizarria, M. T. Co-creating safe spaces in community gardens: multifaceted practices of belonging in Wellington, New Zealand. 2022. (Conference paper abstract)
Braga Bizarria, M. T. Community gardens as spatial praxis: alternatives for women's empowerment. 2020. (Conference paper abstract)
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