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Dr. Esteban Acuña Cabanzo


Scholar in Residence (Northern Border Project) & Adjunct Lecturer

I am an anthropologist who tends towards transdisciplinary work and collaboration, specialized in ethnicity, mobility and migration. As part of the Cultures of Mobility in Europe (COME) group, I carried out my doctoral multi-sited field research on transatlantic mobilities of Romani families in Colombia, Canada and Hungary. Before joining SUNY Plattsburgh I worked on the documentation and analysis of networks of Romani language speakers in the American continent, in a joint effort between the Lacito Lab at the CNRS in Paris, and the Instituto Caro y Cuervo, in Bogota, Colombia. This continued my longtime engagement with Romani families in the country. 

My ethnographic work has concentrated on the deconstruction of binary categories in the study of human movements; the intersections of mobilities, race and ethnicity; mobilities as strategies and tactics of resilience and resistance; life stories and biographical narratives in local and multi-sited ethnographic work; and the relationship between language, representation and how human movement is understood and signified. I have taught cultural anthropology and ethnographic methods in undergraduate liberal arts programs, while also dedicating time to the creation of continuing education courses and applied research in matters of ethnic recognition and peace building in my home country, Colombia.  

I received my undergraduate anthropology degree from the National University of Colombia, my M.A. from Leiden University, in the Netherlands, and my doctoral degree in cultural anthropology and European ethnology from the University of Freiburg, in Germany.

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