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'm working on my book manuscript, Fields of Suspicion: Landmines, Humanitarian Demining, and Peace Laboratories in Rural Colombia, an ethnography of humanitarian demining efforts amidst political uncertainty. 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 and build trust.
Considering their ordinary encounters, technical practices, and ethical commitments, I examine how this unlikely group of collaborators 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 American Ethnologist, Environmental Humanities, The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Current Anthropology, Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, and Technoscience, 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
Anthropology of Latin America. ANTH 3702
Anthropology of Environmental Politics. ANTH 3991/6591
Anthropology of Science and Technology. ANTH 2502
Social Study of Science and Technology. ANTH 6504
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.
2017 Ethics, Collaboration, and Knowledge Production: Digital Storytelling with Sexually Diverse Farmworkers in California. Lateral 6 (1). Co-authored with Tania Lizarazo, Elisa Oceguera, David Tenorio, and Robert McKee Irwin.
Editor-Reviewed Publications
2024 Ordinary Warfare and Militarized Landscapes. A Syllabus. Critical Ethnic Studies Journal.
8 (2). Fall 2023.
2023 Making Peace Possible Amidst Minefields. Hot Spots, Fieldsights, July.
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.
2020 Mine Detection Dog ‘Unit’: More Than Humans in the Humanitarian World. Platypus: The CLASTAC Blog.
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
2023 War as an Environment: Domesticity, Bitterness, and Multispecies Attachments to Life. Current Anthropology 64 (3): 352–53.
2022 Legacies of War: Violence, Ecologies, and Kin by Kimberly Theidon. Anthropological Quarterly 95 (4): 497–504.