I am a Clinical Psychologist and Cultural and Medical Anthropologist. I currently hold the position of Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam, where I coordinate research on sustainability, territorial transformations, and ecological transitions.

My interdisciplinary work combines clinical psychology, social anthropology, and science and technology studies (STS) to explore how geopolitical tensions, climate crises, and social and material dynamics transform people's ways of living and thinking. With a particular focus on mental health, human relations, and their modes of interaction with technology, my research reflects on how these interactions reconfigure both our connections to the world and the possibilities of imagining non-violent, non-destructive presents and more habitable futures.

My academic training began in Chile, where I obtained a degree in Clinical Psychology at Pontificia Universidad Católica (1999). I later specialized in Systemic Family Therapy in Italy (Milan School, 2006), where I also directed and coordinated experimental projects in public mental health and street psychiatry in collaboration with the WHO between 2002 and 2007. In 2012, I completed a PhD in Social and Medical Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, where I investigated intercultural communication in public health services in southern Chile.

Between 2012 and 2016, I undertook a postdoctoral fellowship in Science and Technology Studies (STS) at the University of Amsterdam under the supervision of Annemarie Mol, exploring how food practices shape bodies, relations, and environments (more information here). From 2017 to 2019, I was a Marie Curie Global Fellow, leading the Invisible Waters project at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, which collaborates with UNESCO. This project analyzed practices for making aquifers visible in the Atacama Desert, the driest desert in the world (more information here).

I have led international projects such as the ERC Worlds of Lithium, which investigates the social and material impacts of lithium extraction in Chile, lithium battery production and the use of electric vehicles in China, and battery recycling in Norway (official website). 

My work seeks to build bridges between divergent knowledges and practices of natural science, environmental activism and concerned publics currently emerging around the planet, crafting sustainable and equitable alternatives to address contemporary challenges. 

Currently, I lead the ERC project titled Worlds of Lithium (WOL), which investigates the societal impacts of lithium extraction and lithium-ion batteries in global energy transition efforts. Through empirical studies in Chile, China, and Norway, my research sheds light on our interdependence and co-constitution with these materials and technologies, exploring their transformative implications within the complexities of modern life in times of climate change.

Worlds of Lithium builds upon my previous research, Invisible Waters, supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie EU programme. This project focused on groundwater practices in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, the driest desert in the world, highlighting the urgency of ecologically studying and rethinking what decarbonisation strategies entail.

Postgraduate level

• The Politics of Sustainability: Environments, Cultures, Materials /  Multispecies ecologies and Planetary Matter

Undergraduate level

• Environments, Alterities and the Anthropological Imagination / Practicing Etnography / Ethnographies and academic writing

I am also Supervisor at the Master on Cultural and Social Anthropology, at the  Research Master's in Social Sciences, at the  Master in International Development Studies and at the Master in Medical Anthropology and Sociology