Drawing from a multisited ethnography among bureaucrats, technocrats, and entrepreneurs working on a gold mineral traceability project in Colombia and financiers working on responsible gold sourcing in London, Switzerland, and Paris, my research explores the labour, ethics, and affects that make gold a valuable substance demanded by the tonnes. The dissertation adds to recent critiques of the social studies of finance that have called for an examination of the broader social and political role of financial actors (and financialized substances) in practices of domination, accumulation, exploitation, and racialization. I connect the literature on resource extraction and financial markets by examining the links between the financialization of gold and unbridled gold mining.

My academic interests are Economic Anthropology and the Anthropology of Globalisation with a focus on natural resources. I have more than 8 years of experience working in research projects, consultancy for public and private institutions, and academic dissemination for broad audiences. I am currently a SAPIENS Public Scholars Training Fellow, and a visiting research student at Uniandes's School of Business. I am the Founding Director of the Laboratorio de Antropología Abierta (Open Anthropology Lab; antropologiaabierta.org), an organisation in Colombia that since 2018, produces audiovisual contents for non-academic audiences to increase the impact of academic research.  I hold an MSc in Anthropology and Development from LSE and a BA in Anthropology from Universidad de los Andes, Colombia. 

My research is funded by the Wadsworth International Fellowship of the Wenner Gren Foundation and the Colombian Ministry of Science and Technology. 

Supervisors: Laura Bear and Gisa Weszkalnys