Duvan Escobar

Dr Duvan Escobar is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Social Anthropology at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp, Brazil), funded by a FAPESP fellowship. He holds a PhD (2023) and an MA (2017) in Social Anthropology from Unicamp, and a BA in Political Science from UNAL (2013).

Since 2010, he has conducted collaborative ethnographic research alongside indigenous peoples in the Andes (Misak) and the Amazon (Xikrin and Palikur-Arukwayene). His work intersects Amerindian ethnology, multispecies studies, and political ecology, with a strong focus on indigenous environments, ecologies, sociotechnics, and climate change adaptation in the Amazon. He is a member of the Centre for Research in Indigenous Ethnology (CPEI/Unicamp) and the Humanimalia Research Group (UFSCar). He is also actively affiliated with the World Anthropological Union (WAU), the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America (SALSA), and the Brazilian Anthropological Association (ABA).

Planned Research at ODID

During his time at Oxford, Duvan is working under the supervision of Professor Laura Rival on his current project, "Arts of Making and Caring: A study on sociotechnics and the energy transition among the Palikur of the Baixo Oiapoque." His research explores the deep intersections of indigenous sociotechnics and environmental change. Drawing on recent ethnography in the Brazilian Amazon, he investigates how the Palikur-Arukwayene people engage with materials to produce forms, bodies, and artefacts that possess their own agency and vitality.

His research also analyses how these traditional sociotechnics are currently being adapted through the introduction of solar-powered community ateliers. Rather than viewing the global energy transition merely through the lens of decarbonisation or state-led infrastructure, his work demonstrates how indigenous communities appropriate and "indigenise" these technologies, highlighting sovereign indigenous responses to the global ecological crisis and the Anthropocene.