Arturo Escobar

Kenan Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Emeritus, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA

Born in 1951, Arturo Escobar is an activist-researcher from Cali, Colombia working on territorial struggles against extractivism, post-development, regional transitions, and ontological design. He obtained his first degree in Chemical Engineering from the Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia; a master’s degree in Food Science and International Nutrition from Cornell in 1978 and a PhD in Development Philosophy, Policy, and Planning at Berkeley in 1987. He taught successively in the University of California, Santa Cruz and Smith College, University of Massachusetts, Amherst from the 1980s till 1999. He also served as a Professor of Anthropology and Political Ecology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill from 2000 to 2018. Currently, he is an Adjunct Professor with the PhD Program in Design and Creation, Universidad de Caldas, Manizales (Colombia), and the PhD Program in Environmental Sciences, Universidad del Valle, Cali (Colombia). His most well-known book, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (1995, 2nd Ed. 2011) has been translated into many different languages. His most recent books are; Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds (2018) and Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible (2020). He co-edited the Duke University Book Series – New Ecologies for the Twenty-First Century with Dianne Rocheleau. He is also a member of the editorial boards or international advisory boards for a number of academic journals in different languages including Conservation and Society, Human Geography, Cultural Studies, Third World Quarterly, Ecología Política, among others. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of the Society for International Development – Development. He was named one of the 25 “Most influential intellectuals on sustainability in Iberian-America” by Esglobal and Fundación Avina (2018).