Season 6, Episode 2 — Coffee & Geography
Every now and again, a Coffee & Geography conversation leaves me feeling as though I’ve been gently lifted out of my familiar mental landscape and placed somewhere new — somewhere where the world is stretched wider, deeper, older. My chat with Omar Regalado Fernández, a Mexican paleobiologist now living in Germany, was exactly that kind of experience. It wasn’t just a conversation about fossils, or science, or identity. It was an excavation — of assumptions, of histories, of the stories science tells about itself. And like all good excavations, it revealed far more than either of us expected.
Identity as Movement, Identity as Place
We began, as this podcast so often does, with a sense of place. Omar described growing up in the Pachuca valley in central Mexico — though “growing up” doesn’t quite capture the many geographical layers of his life. His education, work and relationships have taken him across Mexico, to London, and now to Frankfurt. Each move brought new landscapes, new languages, new expectations, and new ways of seeing himself.
I found myself particularly interested by the reveal of Pachuca’s surprising Cornish heritage — the miners who arrived in the 19th century, the pasties (“pastes”) that became woven into local cuisine, even the clock tower bell forged by the same company that later made the bell in Frankfurt. There was something beautifully circular in that: a childhood sound quietly following him across continents.
But what really resonated was the way he framed identity as something shaped both by movement and by the places that hold us. Omar did not try to claim a monolithic “Mexican identity.” Instead, he recognised that “Mexico” isn’t one story but thousands. Regional, cultural, linguistic, historical. Fluid, dynamic, diverse. A network rather than a category. It reminded me, once again, that geography is as much about people and their journeys as it is about terrain.
Paleobiology, and the Colonial Shadows Beneath It
When Omar began to talk about paleobiology, it wasn’t with the romantic shine that often coats the discipline in popular imagination — dinosaurs dusted off like treasures, ‘great men’ peering grandly across deserts. Instead, he gently but firmly guided us toward the shadows around those stories.
He spoke about the Bone Wars — the famous rivalry between Cope and Marsh — not as an isolated tale of eccentric scientists, but as something embedded within the violence of U.S. colonial expansion. These expeditions weren’t taking place in an empty wilderness; they were taking place on Indigenous land, often amid displacement and destruction.
It was one of those moments where you feel your own education shift under your feet. Because yes — I taught Geography for years. I’ve read the stories, seen the films, absorbed the narratives. And yet, as Omar reminded me, we’re rarely asked to question what (and who) had to be erased for those “discoveries” to become celebrated scientific milestones.
What Omar does so well is to show that decolonising science isn’t about rewriting facts — it’s about widening the lens. It’s about acknowledging that scientific knowledge is shaped by politics, power and access. It’s about asking whose perspectives were ignored. Whose knowledge was dismissed. Whose stories were overwritten. And above all, who gets to be seen as a “knowledge‑maker” in the first place.
Science as Story, Science as Responsibility
This idea of “who gets to know things” threaded naturally into our discussion of EDI, colonial legacies and scientific practice. Omar described colonialism using an analogy I don’t think I’ll ever forget: an eldritch horror — creeping, shape‑shifting, whispering “I’m not here” even as it rearranges the world around it. It may sound dramatic, but in context, it made absolute sense. Colonialism resists being named. It embeds itself in institutions. It persuades us that its stories are simply “the truth.” And it creates the illusion that Western scientific methods are universal, objective and neutral.
But science, as Omar reminded me, is not a monolith. It is a practice. A process. A way of paying attention to the world. A way of asking questions. ‘Western’ science is one way — powerful in its tools, yes, but incomplete without the lived expertise of communities, the cultural wisdom of Indigenous peoples, the local ecological knowledge that keeps landscapes alive. Omar has a deep love of science but he also holds it accountable. He isn’t tearing science down; he’s inviting it to grow up.
Renaming, Reclaiming, Respecting
We drifted into the question of renaming species, sparked by an audience question about botanical names tied to colonial figures. Should we erase names? Replace them? Keep them but contextualise the violence behind them?
Omar’s answer was thoughtful and wonderfully pragmatic. Taxonomists change names all the time. Scientific names shift with new data, new discoveries, new classifications. The idea that renaming is destabilising is largely a myth — what’s destabilising is refusing to acknowledge harm.
He spoke about the poinsettia — known in English entirely through the legacy of an American diplomat who pushed for the U.S. annexation of Mexican territory. Meanwhile, the original Nahuatl name cuetlaxōchitl was nearly erased, surviving only in fragments. What does justice look like in a case like that? Erasure? Restoration? Education? Perhaps, Omar suggested, the first step is simply honesty — telling the whole story, not just the comfortable parts.
Hope, in the Shape of Local Action
We ended by talking about hope, the kind rooted in community power. Local languages used in medicine. Climate action grounded in place. Shifting the centre of expertise away from old imperial capitals. Letting people lead from where they are, with what they know.
And as Omar said, if colonialism centralises power, then decolonisation is the work of returning power — knowledge, language, decision‑making — to communities themselves. That, to me, is a profoundly geographical vision. Not merely who owns land, but who belongs to it. Who cares for it. Who tells its stories.
When I think back on this episode, what I remember most is the way Omar thinks: sharp, compassionate, imaginative, unafraid to question, generous in explanation, and always with an eye on justice. He reminded me that geography is not just about the shape of the Earth. It’s about the shape of our relationships — to place, to history, to each other, to the systems that shaped us, and to the futures we’re trying to create.
Check out Omar over at Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mathchaos.bsky.social
Geogramblings 