Leonora Zoninsein is a geographer and artist researching the materiality of the senses. She explores colonial extractive and imperial scientific legacies in fragrance and the way these echo through the contemporary global chemical industry. She received a PhD in Human Geography from the University of California, Berkeley, where her doctoral work was funded by Mellon/ACLS, Georges Lurcy, Evelyn L. Pruitt, and Center for Craft, Creativity and Design grants. Her upcoming book manuscript on chemo-aesthetics focuses on questions of essence, equivalence, and translation, following her dissertation entitled ‘How a Whale Becomes a Molecule: A Geography of Modern Olfaction.’ Leonora has an MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management from the University of Oxford, and her Spring courses focus on emergent ecologies and atmospherics, sensory research methods, and collective creative process. Leonora has exhibited painted works as part of House Show and Pump House exhibitions in San Francisco and Oakland, CA, scent portraits at Herzl Gallery in Tel Aviv, hosted sensory pedagogic gatherings at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and participated in artist residencies at HEIMA in Sydisfjordour, Iceland and at TreeTruck on Lopez Island, Washington. Leonora joins Gallatin as a Research Scientist for the Wetlab, a climate change arts and science public education initiative. Leonora is a perfumer and makes custom blends and conceptual fragrances through her scent studio, NIGHT AIR.
