Leadership for the
ECOZOIC
IVÁN D. VARGAS RONCANCIO
L4E POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW - MCGILL UNIVERSITY
LEGAL THEORY, ECOLOGICAL LAW, INDIGENOUS LEGALITIES,
AMERINDIAN ANTHROPOLOGY, POLITICAL ECOLOGY
Contact: ivan.vargasroncancio@mail.mcgill.ca
Iván is a Ph.D. in Natural Resource Sciences at McGill University, a lawyer with Master’s degrees in Bioscience and Law (National University of Colombia, 2012), and Latin American Studies (Duke University, 2016). He has worked for the Center for Public Policy Research (University of California - Davis, 2011-2013), and the Everyday Peace Indicators Project (George Mason University, 2017-2018). He has been a Colciencias scholar (Colombia, 2013), and a FLAS fellow (Foreign Language and Area Studies-PUC São Paulo, 2016). Iván's research ethnographically follows indigenous practitioners, scientists, legal scholars, and ritual plants across territories, labs, and courts of justice in an effort to contribute to a larger paradigm shift: from reductionist environmental law and governance models to ecological, systems-based and other-than-human jurisprudence in post-conflict Colombia. At the intersection between post-humanist anthropology, legal theory, and plant studies, he explores the limits and possibilities of an ontological and decolonial turn in legal theory and practice in the Andean-Amazonian region. His dissertation asks how forests become legal agents through indigenous, scientific, and legal practices; how human and other-than-human beings such as Amazonian plants co-produce protocols for forest governance, and finally how a law that comes from the territory challenges concepts of justice, agency, and value in times of socio-ecological transitions.
PUBLICATIONS & OTHER WORKS
Vargas Roncancio, I.D. (2021). “Yoco (Paullinia yoco)” In Ryan, J., Gagliano, M., and Vieira, P., (eds.) The Mind of Plants. Synergetic Press: Santa Fe.
Conjuring Sentient Beings and Relations in the Law: A Comparative Praxis of Legal Cosmologies.
Vargas, I. D. (2021). In Anker, K., Burdon, P., Garver, G., Maloney, Carla S., (Eds). From Environmental to Ecological Law. Routledge - Taylor & Francis.
“Indigenous Legalities” - Chapter 25
Vargas Roncancio, I.D., and Chindoy, H., (2020). In Zelle, A., Wilson, G., Adam, R., Greene, H., (eds.). Earth Law: Emerging Ecocentric Law. A practitioner’s Guide. Aspen Coursebook Series. Wolters Kluwer.
“Why would the fish pain debate be so contentious?” Forum Letter in response to Vettese T. et al (2020) “The Great Fish Pain Debate: What happens when scientists get hooked on a question that could be argued forever?”
Gagliano, Monica & Vargas Roncancio, Ivan Darío, (2020). In Issues in Science and Technology, Summer, 49-53.
Forest on Trial: Towards a Relational Theory of Legal Agency for Transitions into the Ecozoic.
In: Liberty and the Ecological Crisis: Freedom on a Finite Planet. 2019.
From the Anthropocene to Mutual Thriving: An Agenda for Higher Education in the Ecozoic
L4E Contributors: Ivan Vargas Roncancio, Leah Temper, Joshua Sterlin, Nina L. Smolyar, Shaun Sellers, Maya Moore, Rigo Melgar-Melgar, Jolyon Larson, Catherine Horner, Jon D. Erickson, Megan Egler, Peter G. Brown, Emille Boulot, Tina Beigi and Michael Babcock
Nomadic ecologies: Plants, embodied knowledge, and temporality in the Colombian Amazon
In: Boletin de Antropologia. Vol. 32, # 53. 2017.
Plants and the Law: Vegetal Ontologies and the Rights of Nature. a Perspective from Latin America
In: Australian Feminist Law Journal. Vol.43, # 1. 2017.
Elementos para una evaluación de los cultivos transgénicos en América Latina: apuntes desde el marxismo ecológico
In: Revista de la Maestria en Derecho Economico.Vol. 6. # 6. 2010.
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Contratos de acceso a recursos genéticos: un análisis comparado
In: Pensamiento Juridico. # 27. 2010.