“Entonces, ¿usted por qué es que sigue viniendo acá?” configuraciones de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia sede Bogotá como espacio vivido, a través de las memorias de cuatro egresados del Departamento de Antropología

Abstract

This study aims to examine how the Bogotá campus of the National University of Colombia is constituted as a lived space, drawing on the memories of five graduates from the Anthropology program between 2023 and 2025. The analysis foregrounds lived and remembered experiences as articulated through the participants’ specific contexts and recollections, focusing on student trajectories shaped by gender, the formation of bonds and support networks, and explored through phenomenology, ethnography, autoethnography, and research-creation within visual anthropology. The theoretical framework is grounded in Henri Lefebvre’s notion of lived space, brought into dialogue with post-development perspectives in the context of higher education. The study identifies student narratives marked by structural and everyday forms of violence, as well as individual and collective strategies of resistance, appropriation, and reconfiguration of the university environment. Ultimately, this research advances a critical perspective on university life, underscoring that academic spaces are not only traversed, but also contested, inhabited, and transformed through the situated and embodied experiences of those who inhabit the university at the moment of graduation.