People

Faculty & Graduate Student Organizers

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  Matilde Córdoba Azcárate

  Matilde Córdoba Azcárate is a social anthropologist interested in questions of space, politics, ecology and global capitalism. I work as an Assistant Professor in the Communication Department and I am an affiliated faculty member at The Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies (CILAS), The Center for U.S-Mexican Studies, The Chicano/a Latino/a Arts and Humanities Program and the International Institute. At UC San Diego. My book Stuck with Tourism: Space, Power and Labor in Contemporay Yucatan (UC Press, Fall 2020) explores the moral, political, ecological, and everyday dilemmas that emerge when, as Yucatán’s inhabitants put it, people get stuck to tourism’s extractive grip. Contrasting labor and lived experiences at beach resorts, protected natural enclaves, historical buildings of the colonial past and maquilas for souvenir production, the book shows how tourism has become one of the leading forces organizing the predatory geographies of late capitalism. I am currently working on an edited collection on the Geopolitics of Tourism and interested in the dystopian futures fostered by the expansion of Chinese mega infrastructure projects in rural Latin America. More about me here: https://quote.ucsd.edu/mcazcarate/

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  Elana Zilberg

  Elana Zilberg is Associate Professor in Communication and affiliated faculty with The Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies (CILAS), The Center Comparative Immigration Studies, the Department of Ethnic Studies, The Chicano/a Latino/a Arts and Humanities Program and the International Institute. Her book Space of Detention: The Making of a Transnational Gang Crisis between Los Angeles and San Salvador (Duke 2011) tackled the devastating intersection of U.S. foreign policy and immigration, criminal and anti-terrorist law from the wane of the Cold War to the rise of the War on Terror for Central American (immigrant) youth on the streets of urban barrios in both countries. Her current book manuscript in progress, tentatively entitled “Bridging Divides: Race, Nature and Infrastructure at the Los Angeles River,” examines the contentious spatial and material politics surrounding urban river revitalization. She teaches courses on borders, urban political ecology, built environments and infrastructure, environmental justice, global consumer geographies, ethnographic research methodology and socio-cultural theory. She co-founded and directed the Studio for Ethnographic Design, served as PI for the UC Collaboratory for Ethnographic Design (MRPI), and is incoming co-director of the Human Rights and Migration Program.