I’m delighted to share that I’ll be presenting my paper, “The Specter of the Plurinational State of Chile,” at the Annual Meetings of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in New Orleans.

Panel: Ghosts of Democracies Past and Otherwise
Saturday, November 22, 2025 | 2:30–4:00 p.m. | Marriott, Galerie 2

This session brings together scholars examining how the past continues to haunt democratic projects across diverse geopolitical and historical contexts. Decades after the Global Sixties and the post–Cold War wave of democratization, democracy appears to be in crisis at a global scale. Hailing from multiple disciplines and institutional backgrounds—and inspired by the 2025 conference theme’s focus on the spectral—presenters in this panel explore how immaterial worlds—ghosts, memories, and afterlives—shape democratic politics today.

Our papers trace how democracy is haunted by what it cannot contain:
• the lingering specters of Argentina’s Dirty War in collective memory amidst Far-Right austerity;
• the afterlives of Civil War–era incarceration and settler-colonial land relations in the contemporary United States;
• the ghosts of mass protest and a failed constitution in Chile; and
• an Algeria haunted by the martyrs and unfinished futures of its revolutionary struggle.

My own contribution examines how the unfinished project of Chile’s plurinational constitution reverberates through urban Mapuche cultural centers, where neighbors reimagine democracy as an everyday, relational practice.

If you’ll be attending the AAA meetings and would like to connect, please feel free to reach out via my Contact Form to arrange a time to meet in New Orleans.