I identify as an urban and visual ethnographer with a PhD in Sociology from the Universidade Federal de São Carlos (Brazil), a Master degree in Anthropology from FLACSO Ecuador. My academic trajectory has been shaped by international research experiences at University of Toronto (Canada) and Leiden University (Netherlands), where I have engaged with interdisciplinary approaches to governance, migration, and inequality. My work has developed through long-term ethnographic research across Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, and Brazil, focusing on the intersections between violence, migration, illegal economies, and marginality in the Global South.
I currently work as a senior researcher at the Observatorio del Caribe Colombiano and as a Wenner-Gren Foundation Hunt Postdoctoral Fellow, leading research on migration and border dynamics. My career has also included collaborations with humanitarian institutions such as the Cruz Roja Colombiana, where I contributed to national migration strategies in complex frontier contexts.
My academic and visual work has received international recognition, including the first prize in the The Migrant Body photography competition, supported by the University of Manchester and the British Academy, as well as multiple research grants and fellowships from institutions such as Minciencias and ICANH. At the same time, my work is in constant development, exploring new ways of communicating research beyond traditional academic formats. Through visual ethnography, photography, and documentary storytelling, I seek to expand the reach of academic knowledge toward broader publics. For me, research is not only analytical but also creative: a way of translating complex social realities into narratives that connect, question, and make visible the lived experiences of those at the margins