Diana Pardo Pedraza

My current and future research examines how armed conflict, humanitarian aid, and peacebuilding reshape landscapes, political relations, and everyday life, and how human and nonhuman communities participate in these transformations.

My first book, Fields of Suspicion: Landmines and the Making of Peace in Rural Colombia, is currently in production with Duke University Press and will be out in March 2027. Drawing on over twenty-four months of ethnographic fieldwork, Fields of Suspicion examines how explosive contamination, armed conflict, state neglect, and extractive projects produce environments saturated with anxiety and doubt. These affective landscapes endure as mine clearance and the promise of peace pledge safety and renewal—and, in many ways, precisely because of them. Rather than presenting demining as a purely technical or humanitarian activity, Fields of Suspicion shows how it is entangled with broader social projects of governance, territorial control, and economic progress. Yet the book is equally attentive to the fragile and unfinished labor of partial recuperation. Despite continuing suspicion, Army deminers, rebel soldiers, government officials, humanitarian workers, and campesinos (small farmers) strove to rebuild trust among themselves and with the territories they inhabit, testing the possibilities of peace.

My current research project, and next book project, tentatively titled Tails without Borders: Mine Detection Dogs and the Breeding of Global Security, is a multi-sited ethnographic study of how dogs become living technologies and social agents within global humanitarian and security regimes. The project investigates the biological, technical, and institutional trajectories through which detection dogs are bred, trained, circulated, and eventually retired. Tails without Borders follows these dogs’ trajectories from kennels and training grounds in Bosnia and Herzegovina to minefields in Cambodia and Colombia, and to retirement homes in Norway and the U.S.

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 

Book

In production      “Fields of Suspicion: Landmines and the Making of Peace in Rural Colombia.” Duke University Press. Coming out in March 2027.

Journal articles (*indicates peer-reviewed)

Forthcoming        Alternativas infernales: entre campos minados, el temor de la (re)ocupación y la sospecha residual. Revista Colombiana de Antropología. Coming out in January 2027.*

2026                    Grounding Specifics: Rats and Dogs in Landmine Detection. Co-authored with Darcie DeAngelo. War & Society. LINK*

2025                     Time and the remains of war: Retazos of morgues and minefields in Colombia. Ethnography 0 (0): Co-authored with Julia Morales Fontanilla. LINK*

2024                    Ordinary Warfare and Militarized Landscapes. A Syllabus. Critical Ethnic Studies Journal. 8 (2). Fall 2023. LINK

2023                    Sensory Co-laboring: Mine Detection Dogs and Handlers in Humanitarian Demining in Colombia. Environmental Humanities 15 (3): 30–51. LINK*

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. LINK*

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. LINK*

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. LINK

2023                    “Introduction to The Domestication of War.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 9 (1). Co-authored with Xan Chacko, Jennifer Terry, and Astrida Neimanis. LINK

2020                     Artefacto Explosivo Improvisado: Landmines and Rebel Expertise in Colombian Warfare. Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society 3 (1): 472–92. LINK*

Book Chapters

2023                    Q de Quiebrapatas. In Belicopedia. Edited by Daniel Ruiz Serna and Diana Ojeda. Bogotá, Colombia. Universidad de los Andes. LINK

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. LINK*

Book Reviews

2023                   War as an Environment: Domesticity, Bitterness, and Multispecies Attachments to Life. Current Anthropology 64 (3): 352–53. LINK

2022                    Legacies of War: Violence, Ecologies, and Kin by Kimberly Theidon. Anthropological Quarterly 95 (4): 497–504. LINK

Special Issues

2023                    Co-editor (with Xan Chacko, Jennifer Terry, and Astrida Neimanis) of The Domestication of War.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 9 (1). LINK*

Online articles and publications (editor-reviewed)

2023                    Making Peace Possible Amidst Minefields. Hot Spots, Fieldsights, July. LINK

2022                     Landscapes of Suspicion: Minefields and Cleared-Lands in Rural Colombia. Theorizing the Contemporary, Fieldsights, January. LINK

2020                    On Landmines and Suspicion: How (not) to Walk Explosive Fields. Environment & Planning D: Society & Space, Forum. LINK

2020                    Mine Detection Dog ‘Unit’: More Than Humans in the Humanitarian World.” Platypus: The CLASTAC Blog. LINK