Dr Sebastian Vacas Oleas
Dr Sebastian Vacas Oleas is a social anthropologist working with Shuar people in Southeast lowland Ecuador (DPhil in Social & Cultural Anthropology at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, St Cross College, 2022). I am interested in contemporary indigenous political organisation and its entanglements with and survival of colonial forms of governance. My research focuses on Shuar understanding of history, cultural continuities and ruptures in indigenous political movements and institutions, and resource extraction on indigenous land. My doctoral dissertation examined how indigenous notions of history helped Shuar people oppose colonial narratives of history to mobilise multiple and multifaceted political efforts vis-à-vis industrial mining in their lands.
The Indigenous Studies Network has been awarded for two years (Hilary Term 2022 - Hilary Term 2024).
