2004 PhD, Geography, University of California, Berkeley
1998 MA, ELatin American Studies, University of California, Berkeley
1993 BA, Economics, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá

Professor, Universidad de los Andes (assistant, associate and full)

I was was born and live at 2,600 meters above sea level in Bogotá (the capital of Colombia), where I have been teaching at Universidad de los Andes for the last 20 years. I started off studying economics and got on the right track by working on biodiversity conservation and then finishing a Ph.D. in Geography (at UC Berkeley). But I pass for a historian who likes to think about the environment, so much so that I am president of the International Consortium of Environmental History Organizations (ICEHO) and was co-president of the Latin American and Caribbean Society for Environmental History (SOLCHA). I identify with mountains but have done a good part of my research on rainforest regions. I am currently working on the history on nature conservation in Colombia and on the history of various animals, especially mules and dogs. I am married to an American, have two kids and a dog.

Landscapes of Freedom, Building a Postemancipation Society in the Rainforests of Western Colombia. The University of Arizona Press, 2018. (Also published in Spanish by Ediciones Uniandes in 2020).

With Eduardo Restrepo. Unos bosques sembrados de aserríos, Historia de la extracción maderera en el Pacífico colombiano. Universidad de Antioquia, Universidad Nacional sede Medellín, Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia, 2003.

A la buena de Dios: colonización en La Macarena, ríos Duda y Guayabero. Fescol-Cerec, 1995.

Edited books:

Fragmentos de historia ambiental colombiana, Ediciones Uniandes, 2020.

With John Soluri and José Augusto Pádua. A Living Past: Environmental Histories of Modern Latin America. Berghahn Books, 2018 (Also published in Spanish by Ediciones Uniandes and Fondo de Cultura Económica in 2019).

With Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, Mathew Kelly y Emily Wakild. The Nature State: Rethinking the History of Conservation. Routledge, 2017.

With Carl Langebaek. Historias sobre raza y nación en América Latina. Ediciones Uniandes, 2010.

With Emily Wakild and Frederico Freitas, “Porous Conservation: The Complex History of People in National Parks in Latin America”. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 2025, 1-11.

“Caminos peregrinos para una historia más colorida, ruidosa y olorosa”, HALAC vol.14, n.3, 2024, pp.30-48.

“Epiloque: More complete stories and better explanations for a renewed worldview”, en Diogo de Carvalho Cabral, André Vital y Margarita Gascón (eds.) More-than-Human Histories of Latin America and the Caribbean: Decentering the Human in Environmental History. University of London Press, 2024.

With Emily Wakild y Frederico Freitas, “Before Biodiversity: Trajectories of National Parks in Latin America (1930s-1980s)”, Latin American Research Review, 2024, pp.1-20.

“A country of forests: Territorial state building in Colombia”, in Lina Britto y A. Ricardo López-Pedreros (eds.) Histories of Perplexity: Colombia, 1970s-2010s. Nueva York: Routledge, 2024, pp.109-126.