My research explores how the global rise of renewable energy intersects with Indigenous peoples’ environmental relations, practices of resistance, and political and economic life in Latin America. I teach courses on energy, extractivism, development, climate justice, ethnographic methods, and Indigenous environmental movements.
I am currently developing my first book project, tentatively titled Wind Futures: Indigeneity, Aerial Worlds, and the Making of Renewable Energy in Colombia. This ethnography traces the multifaceted ways in which Indigenous Wayúu communities, energy experts, and state bureaucrats experience, negotiate, and shape the transition from fossil fuels to renewables in La Guajira– one of the windiest places in South America. At CC, I will also be working on a new project with students on Colorado’s energy transition in and around the wind farms of Limon.
My academic writing has appeared in American Ethnologist, Economic Anthropology, Anthropology News, Istor, and other publications. My research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council and the Wenner-Gren, Mellon, and Tinker Foundations, among others.
I hold a PhD in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Chicago.
