Cesar Camilo Castillo Estupinan

About Cesar Camilo Castillo Estupinan

Research Interests

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Global Studies, and I have been interested in the entanglements of science, technology and society since my master studies in the Social Studies of Science program at National University of Colombia (2017).

Since then, my research seeks to engage in a generative way with scientists and rural communities to understand the role of science and technology in the making of our contemporary sociotechnical orderings. Combining Science and Technology Studies (STS) and cultural anthropology, my work has explored the mundane making of the state, the tensions between biodiversity conservation and peasant communities worlds, the practical development of quantum technologies in Sweden and more recently I’ve been interested in the role of sociotechnical infrastructures shaping the management of potato plant diseases in the Andes.

Current Research

Recently, I was awarded an International Postdoc Grant by the Swedish Research Council (2023-06518) for my project “Developing a sociotechnical approach to study agrifood systems: an ethnography of plant diseases management in the Andes” in which I investigate the interrelated influence of sociotechnical systems in the management of potato plant diseases in the Andes.

Previous Research

My doctoral thesis “Reconfiguring the Ontological Politics of Conservation: An Ethnography of Campesinos and Scientists in the Andean Páramos” (2023, Linköping University Electronic Press), analysed the making of biodiversity conservation in the Colombian Andes and the frictions that it produces between different ways of knowing and being in the world. Based on my ethnographic engagements with biologists, geographers, and peasant communities, I studied how their practices have an effect that shape how spacious conservation can be for diverse ways of living. The thesis showed the importance of analysing the actions and interventions made in the name of conservation as practices that coproduce knowledge and social orders

Collaborations

Since 2021 I have been part of the Sumapaz Research Collective, an action-research initiative led by independent researchers to collaboratively work with peasant communities in the colombian region of Sumapaz to support their agendas of environmental justice, food sovereignty and agrarian change. And since 2019 I collaborate with quantum communication scientists in Sweden using collaborative ethnographic methods as the means to understand the practicalities involved in their laboratory work. Throughout this collaboration, we have explored the situated dynamics of the experimental practices that shape the emergence of quantum communication technologies in Europe. Part of this work was presented at the EASST Conference in Madrid in 2022 and in 2023 we were invited to give a talk in the symposium “We Have Always Been Hybrid: celebrating and remembering Bruno Latour” organized by Kingston University.

Publications (selection)

• Castillo-Estupiñan, Camilo. ‘Reconfiguring Conservation and Ontological Politics’. PhD Thesis, Linköping University, 2023.
• Castillo-Estupiñan, Camilo. ‘Topological Encounters in Biodiversity Conservation: Making and Contesting Maps in the Colombian High Andean Páramos’. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 10, 2023.
• Castillo- Estupiñan, Camilo. ‘Boundary-Making in Conservation: The Configuration of Environmental Ontologies in the Andean Páramos’. Sociological Perspectives 66, no. 5, 2023.
• Parra-Romero, Adela, and Castillo-Estupiñan, Camilo. ‘Do We Inhabit the Same Mountain? Towards Ontological Openings in Páramo Conservation’. Ambiente & Sociedade 26, 2023.