Senior scientist: professor Carlos Del Cairo

Carlos Del Cairo is Professor of Anthropology at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, where he also directs the Department of Anthropology. An anthropologist and political ecologist, his research explores socio-environmental and territorial dynamics in Colombia, with particular attention to relations between society and nature, campesino and Indigenous communities, and the politics of difference.

Within PREFER, Carlos contributes to the Colombian research, bringing his long-standing experience of ethnographic and qualitative research on territory, socio-environmental change and rural communities. His involvement focuses particularly on Venecia and the surrounding rural territory, where he works with the project team on the relationships between campesino life, territory and changing conditions. His broader work on political ecology and socio-environmental relations provides an important Colombian perspective on the project’s investigation of what people experience as being at stake when their ways of living are under pressure.