Hi, I’m Juliana Ramirez.
I'm a senior at the University of Denver, finishing degrees in Anthropology and Geography with minors in Studio Art, Leadership Studies, and Business Administration. I work in English, Portuguese, and Spanish.
My mother is Brazilian, and I speak Portuguese, so Brazil keeps finding its way into my work, from a cartography project on deforestation in the Amazon to my current research on Indigenous leadership and environmental justice organizing around COP30. I want Brazil to stay in my future, not just my past.
How I See the World
Photograph by Gabriel Moeremans
The thing I do most consistently outside of school is make art. I've photographed for a long time as well, and what I keep coming back to is people interacting. People talking, joking, doing henna on each other, eating, sitting together in a field. I'm less interested in a perfect shot than in the moment where you can see the connection between people, and I want whoever looks at the photo to feel what I felt, which is basically: look how special this is.
I also paint. So much that it became a minor. Mostly strange, personal, nostalgic things. Moments I want to keep. I didn't minor in Studio Art for my resume. I did it because I love making things.
Geography follows the same pattern. People assume it means maps, and maps are part of it, but what I actually study is human geography: how places shape the people who live in them, and how people remake places in return. Land, identity, politics, community. GIS is one tool inside that interest, not the interest itself.
All of this is one instinct in different forms. I notice moments between people, and I want to make something that lets someone else see them the way I do. This website is the biggest version of that so far.