Camilo Acero-Vargas is a research student based in the International Development department under the supervision of Professor Catherine Boone and Professor Jean Paul Faguet. In his PhD project, he will explore how rural inequalities are reproduced in Latin America, and how this relates to the broader processes of state building, political representation and social conflict.

He was awarded an undergraduate degree and master’s degree in political science at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Before starting his doctoral studies, he worked for six years as a researcher in the Observatory of Agrarian Property Rights focusing on land politics/policies in Colombia. He remains affiliated as a Research Associate. Since 2018, he worked as a researcher in Drug(s) and (dis)order, a Global Challenges Research Fund Project interested in the transit of drug economies into peacetime economies in the aftermath of war with a focus on Afghanistan, Myanmar and Colombia. He was also a Lecturer at Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá. His most recent co-authored publications include an article in World Development on land formalization and counter-narcotics, an article in the International Journal of Drug Policy on peace and the illicit crop substitution program in Colombia, and a forthcoming article in Third World Quarterly on the peasantry and state legitimacy in the coca frontiers.