UF Center for Latin American Studies
Environmental justice; Political ecology; Critical agrarian studies; Political economy; Intersectionality; Violence; Peacebuilding; Labor studies
Colombia [Pacific, Amazonian, Andean regions]; Darien region
I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida's Center for Latin American Studies. I hold a Ph.D. from the Free University of Berlin (Germany) and have served as a Visiting Researcher (Professorial Research Associate) in the Development Studies Department at SOAS, University of London, UK. Additionally, I have taught in the Sociology Department and the School of Human Sciences at Rosario University in Colombia.
As a Colombian academic with roots in rural communities, my work centers on socio-environmental conflicts and the active participation in social and community processes in regions shaped by enduring violence. My primary research interests include: (a) Territoriality, land rights and struggles over land use, (b) Frontiers, global value chains, and labor regimes, (c) Violence and environmental peacebuilding, and (d) Food regimes and agroecology.
Between 2017 and 2024, my research agenda focused on Colombia's transitional processes, particularly the implications of the 2016 Peace Agreement. I am currently developing a book project that examines transitional dynamics across social, political, economic, and environmental dimensions in Colombia. This work explores the disproportionate impacts of violence on specific regions and groups, and its intersections with extractivist and agro-industrial agendas and war economies. It highlights how affected communities generate economies and ecologies of peace, emphasizing the socio-spatial processes, materialities, and narratives connected to both the rights of nature and human rights.
My research has been featured in leading journals such as Journal of Agrarian Change, Current Sociology, Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, Geopolítica(s), and Análisis Político. I recently edited the book Construir la Paz en las Fronteras Internas (Peacebuilding at Internal Borders, Universidad del Rosario, 2024), which adopts an interdisciplinary lens to study peacebuilding in Colombia's "internal borders." The book integrates regional case studies with frontier-focused literature, exploring historical, socio-spatial, political, environmental, economic, and institutional processes. With an emphasis on the “spatial turn,” it bridges rural sociology, agrarian studies, and political science with geographic analyses of state formation and territorialization, offering a comprehensive framework for understanding recent peacebuilding efforts in Colombia's sub-regions.
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