Diana Pardo Pedraza
Diana Pardo Pedraza
Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs
Full-time Faculty
Contact:
Office 302 Hortense Amsterdam House, 2110 G St. NW
Washington DC 20052
I'm an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs. I received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis in Cultural Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Feminist Theory and Research. My ethnographic work, based in rural Colombia, considers (de)militarized landscapes, post-conflict economics, environmental politics, and multispecies relations of aid and care.
Explosive Legacies of Warfare; Practices & Politics of Humanitarian Demining; Ethnographic Theory; (Post)Conflict & Development.
Anthropology of Violence & Peace; Feminist Geographies & Political Ecology; Feminist Science & Technology Studies; Critical Humanitarian Studies; Colombia & Latin American Studies.
Currently, I am working on my book manuscript, Landscapes of Suspicion: Minefields, Peace Laboratories, and the Ecologies of (Post)War in Colombia, an ethnography of humanitarian demining efforts. Based on two years of multi-sited ethnographic research, the book follows Army deminers, guerrilla fighters, humanitarian professionals, and local peasants in their efforts to demilitarize landscapes.
Considering their ordinary encounters, technical practices, and ethical commitments, I examine how humanitarian demining undo, configure, and/or renew the long-lasting affective ecologies produced by improvised landmines during Colombia's decades-long war. The book illuminates the possibilities and challenges of ecological and political reconciliation by calling attention to war-inherited suspicion and how postwar interventions reshape it.
My work has been published in Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, and Technoscience, Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, and Environment & Planning D: Society & Space, and it is forthcoming in American Ethnologist, Environmental Humanities, and Critical Ethnic Studies Journal.
Ph.D., 2019, Cultural Studies with Designated Emphasis in Feminist Theory and Research, University of California, Davis, USA.
M.A., 2010, Cultural Studies, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
B.A., 2009, History, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
(ANTH 3702) Anthropology of Latin America
(ANTH 3991/6591) Anthropology of Environmental Politics
(ANTH 2502/6504) Anthropology of Science and Technology
Peer Reviewed Publications
2023 Sensory Co-laboring: Mine Detection Dogs and Handlers in Humanitarian Demining in Colombia. Environmental Humanities 15 (3): 30–51.
2023 Ethical Disconcertment and the Politics of Troublemaking: Land mines, Humanitarian Demining and Ecologies of Trouble in Rural Colombia. American Ethnologist 50 (3): 462–73.
2023 Explosiveness: Territories of War and Technoscientific Practices in Colombia. The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology. 28 (3): 239-250. Co-authored with Julia Morales Fontanilla.
2023 Response to commentaries to explosiveness: Territories of war and technoscientific practice in Colombia. The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology. 28 (4): 360-361. Co-authored with Julia Morales Fontanilla.
2023 “Introduction to The Domestication of War.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 9 (1). Co-authored with Xan Chacko, Jennifer Terry, and Astrida Neimanis.
2020 Artefacto Explosivo Improvisado: Landmines and Rebel Expertise in Colombian Warfare. Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society 3 (1): 472–92.
Editor-Reviewed Publications
Forthcoming Ordinary Warfare and Militarized Landscapes. A Syllabus. Critical Ethnic Studies Journal. 9 (1). (Fall 2023).
2022 Landscapes of Suspicion: Minefields and Cleared-Lands in Rural Colombia. Theorizing the Contemporary, Fieldsights, January.
2021 Aprender a tocar bien. Boletina Anual # 9, Escuela de Estudios de Género, Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Facultad de Ciencias Humanas. September.
2020 On Landmines and Suspicion: How (not) to Walk Explosive Fields. Environment & Planning D: Society & Space, Forum.
Book Chapters
2023 Q de Quiebrapatas. In Belicopedia. Edited by Daniel Ruiz Serna and Diana Ojeda. Bogotá, Colombia. Universidad de los Andes.
2017 The Amputated Body: Ghostly and Literal Presence. In Territories of Conflict: Traversing Colombia through Cultural Studies. Edited by Andrea Fanta Castro, Alejandro Herrero-Olaizola, Chloe Rutter-Jensen, New York: University of Rochester Press.
Book Reviews
2022 Legacies of War: Violence, Ecologies, and Kin by Kimberly Theidon. Anthropological Quarterly 95 (4): 497–504.
2023 War as an environment: domesticity, bitterness, and multispecies attachments to life. Current Anthropology.
Special Issues
2023 Co-editor (with Xan Chacko, Jennifer Terry, and Astrida Neimanis) of The Domestication of War.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 9 (1).
Online publications
2020 Mine Detection Dog ‘Unit’: More Than Humans in the Humanitarian World.” Platypus: The CLASTAC Blog.
2016 Scaling Up Trust in Suspicious Landscapes: Artefactos Explosivos Improvisados and Humanitarian Demining in Colombia. Backchannels, Society for Social Studies of Science.