Full List

of talks, presentations, and panels

Author

Carwil Bjork-James

Invited Talks

2026

  • “Blockades Stronger than Bullets: The Continuing Power of Street Protest in a Changing Bolivia.” Northern Illinois University (DeKalb, Illinois, April 2026).
  • “What Remains of Bolivia’s Grassroots Revolution?.” University of Mississippi (Oxford, Mississippi, March 2026).

2025

  • “Unarmed Militancy: Tactics and Subjectivity in Recent Disruptive Protest.” Department of Psychology, Sigmund Freud University (Berlin, June 2025).

2023

  • “The Sovereign Street: How Bolivian Protesters Carried out a Revolution.” San Francisco State University (San Francisco, CA, September 2023).

2021

  • Panelist, “Activism and Advocacy in Anthropology Careers.” San Francisco State University (San Francisco, CA and online, October 2021).
  • “A Historical Overview of the Andean Culture and Indigenous People.” Virtual Conference on the Indigenous People in the High Andes, International Studies Consortium of Georgia (online, October 2021).
  • “Prospects and Challenges for Indigenous People in the Andean Region.” Virtual Conference on the Indigenous People in the High Andes, International Studies Consortium of Georgia (online, October 2021).
  • “After Evo, A Return to the Grassroots? Understanding Bolivia’s New Left Coalition.” Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign, IL and online, February 2021).

2020

  • Panelist, “Bolivia’s Electoral Victory: What Challenges Lie Ahead For MAS?.” Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University (CLACS) and the North American Congress on Latin America (New York, NY and online, November 2020).
  • “Bolivia’s Democracy in Turbulent Times.” Latin American Studies Program, Western Washington University (Bellingham, WA and online, November 2020).
  • Moderator, “Bolivia: ¿El fin de un ciclo?: Movimientos Sociales y la Crisis Política.” Canadian Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Carleton University, Universidad Mayor de San Andres, et al. (Ottawa and online, October 2020).
  • “What’s at Stake in the Upcoming Bolivian Elections.” University of Mississippi (Oxford, MS, March 2020). panel with Jorge Derpic.

2019

  • “A Dead Mestiza General, a Bachelor President, and the Compensatory Gender Progressivism of Plurinational Bolivia.” Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA, November 2019).
  • “Researching Bolivia’s Gas War: The Social Scientist as a Witness to State Violence.” Harvard Law School (Cambridge, MA, November 2019).
  • Keynote, “New Maps for an Inclusive Wikipedia: Plotting Strategies to Counter Systemic Bias.” Worlds of Wikimedia Conference, University of Sydney (Sydney, Australia, June 2019).
  • “Indigenous Peoples Confronting Extractivism in Andean South America: New Terrains of Struggle in Plurinational and Liberal States.” Climate Justice Research Centre, University of Technology Sydney (Sydney, Australia, June 2019).

2017

  • “Left Populism in the Heart of South America.” Community Change in Global Perspective Seminar, CUNY Graduate Center (New York, NY, October 2017).

2016

  • “La Calle Soberana: La Ciudad como Terreno de Protesta.” Centro de Estudios Superiores Universitarios, Universidad Mayor San Simón (Cochabamba, Bolivia, November 2016).
  • “Wounded Bodies, Heroic Deaths, and the Reimagined Community of Plurinational Bolivia.” Department of Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center (New York, NY, October 2016).
  • “Unarmed Militants and Irrepressible Uprisings: Beyond Violence and Nonviolence in Bolivia.” Department of Anthropology and Social Change, California Institute of Integral Studies (San Francisco, CA, September 2016).

2015

  • “Dense and Nimble Activisms in Bolivian Radical Politics.” Department of Anthropology, Queens College (New York, NY, October 2015).

2014

  • “On Unarmed Militancy.” Towson University (Red Emma’s Bookstore, Baltimore, December 2014).

2013

  • “A New Urgency? Urban Imaginaries in the Era of Climate Crisis.” The New School Graduate Program in Design and Urban Ecologies (New York, April 2013).
  • “Claiming the Power of the Plaza: Race, Power, and Urban Space in Contemporary Bolivian Protest.” Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University (Nashville, January 2013).

2012

  • “Still Mobilized: Water Warriors, Indigenous Movements and other Principled Dissenters in Bolivia’s ‘Process of Change,’.” Department of Latin American and Latino/a Studies, Towson University (Baltimore, March 2012). travel expenses.

2010

  • “Whose City? Studying Protest, Power and Urban Space through Oral Narratives.” Oral History Research Office Summer Institute (Columbia University, New York City, June 2010).

Conference Presentations

2025

  • Panelist, “Bearing ‘Freedom’ in Dark Times.” AAA Annual Meeting (New Orleans, November 2025).
  • Panelist, “Empire and Its Haunts.” AAA Annual Meeting (New Orleans, November 2025).
  • “Open Data for Public Memory: Building a Digital Archive of Bolivian Political Violence.” Public Anthropology Conference (Washington, November 2025).
  • “Contributing to Wikimedia during an Open Data Human Rights Project.” Wiki Conference North America (New York City, October 2025).
  • “Mapping Political Violence in Bolivia: The Ultimate Consequences Digital Archive.” Mobilization Annual Conference (San Diego, June 2025).
  • “Direct Action, Syndicalism, and the Right to Strike.” Direct Action and Democracy: Histories and Transformations (Bochum, Germany, June 2025).
  • “Mapping Political Violence in Bolivia: The Ultimate Consequences Digital Archive.” AAG Annual Conference (virtual, March 2025).
  • “‘It Has Cost Us Blood’: How Bolivian Movements Characterize Death in Protest.” SLACA Biannual Conference (Panama City, Panama, March 2025). co-authored with Emma Banks.

2024

  • “Open Knowledge as Pedagogical Praxis: How Faculty and Students are Opening up the Field of Anthropology by Improving Wikipedia.” AAA Annual Meeting (Tampa, November 2024).
  • “Generative AI and Wikipedia: A Discussion.” WikiConference North America (Columbus, October 2024).

2023

  • “Turns Toward and Away from Violent Repression in Democratic Bolivia.” Violent Turns: Sources, Interpretations, Responses (Paris, June 2023).

2022

  • “Fires in Bolivia’s 2019 Crisis: Policy Failure as Accelerant of Political Division.” AAA Annual Meeting (Seattle, November 2022).
  • “Plurinationalism’s Fragments: Indigenous Politics in a Post-Morales Bolivia.” Seventh Conference on Ethnicity, Race and Indigenous Peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean (Mexico City, October 2022).
  • “Del pluralismo indígena al extractivismo centralizado: Cómo las prerrogativas estatales reformaron el enfoque territorial de Bolivia Plurinacional.” Diálogo “La Amazonia Andina y las crisis del siglo XXI: cambio climático, extractivismo y pandemia” (Quito, July 2022).
  • “The Political Violence of the 2019 Bolivian Crisis in Historical Perspective.” LASA Congress (virtual, May 2022).

2021

  • Panelist, “Bolivia in Crisis.” AAA Annual Meeting (Baltimore, November 2021).
  • Plenary, “New Maps for an Inclusive Wikipedia: Strategies to Counter Systemic Bias.” WikiConference North America (virtual, October 2021).
  • Roundtable presenter, “Bolivia: Political Crisis, Elections and Pandemic.” LASA Congress (virtual, May 2021).
  • “Concession Blocks, Spiraling Open-Pits, and Wily Start-Ups: Spatialities of Andean Extractivism.” AAG Annual Meeting (virtual, May 2021).

2020

  • “When Lethal Repression Fails: Unarmed Militancy and Backfire in Bolivia, 1982–2019.” Andean Studies Proseminar (Quito/virtual, July 2020).

2019

  • “Conveying the Plural Realities of Revolution: Notes from My Historical Ethnography of Contemporary Bolivia.” AAA Annual Meeting (Vancouver, November 2019).
  • Panelist, “No ‘Planet B’: Multiplanetary Ethics in the Anthropocene.” AAA Annual Meeting (Vancouver, November 2019).
  • “Next Steps for Countering Systemic Bias: Beyond Filling the Gaps.” WikiConference North America (Columbus, October 2019).
  • Co-organizer, “From Peasant Wars to Bolivia’s Water and Gas Wars: Rural–Urban Alliances and Revolution.” Revisiting Revolution (Nashville, September 2019).
  • “Street Sovereignty and Regimes Founded on Revolts: Rethinking the Turbulent History of Bolivia, 1936–2010.” Thinking Andean Studies Conference (Evanston, IL, April 2019).

2018

  • “The Sudden Rise and Bloody Fall of Neoliberal Authoritarianism in Bolivia: Movement Tactics and State Violence.” AAA Annual Meeting (San José, November 2018).
  • “Homogenous Space or Culturally Textured Landscapes? Clashing Perspectives on Indigenous Territory in Plurinational Bolivia.” AAG Annual Meeting (New Orleans, April 2018).

2017

  • “Conflicting Conceptions of Territory in Bolivia’s TIPNIS Conflict.” LASA Congress (Lima, Peru, May 2017).

2016

  • “Bringing a Critical Antiracist Lens to the Plurinational State of Bolivia.” AAA Annual Meeting (Minneapolis, November 2016).
  • “Indigenous Concepts as Hard and Soft Law: The Divergent Paths of Vivir Bien and Prior Consultation.” LASA Congress (New York, May 2016).

2015

  • “Binding Leaders to the Community: The Ethics of Bolivia’s Organic Grassroots.” AAA Annual Meeting (Denver, November 2015).
  • “Respect and Invasion: The Body, the City, and Racism in Contemporary Bolivian Political Conflict.” LASA Congress (San Juan, Puerto Rico, May 2015).
  • “The Emergence of Unarmed Militancy: Tactics and Subjectivity in Recent Disruptive Protest.” SLACA Conference (Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico, March 2015).

2014

  • Poster, “The Sovereign Street: Events, Imagined Communities, Revolution.” AAA Annual Meeting (Washington, December 2014).

2012

  • “The Dance of Repression, Space-Claiming, and Irrepressibility in Bolivia’s TIPNIS Conflict.” Conference on Critical Geography (Chapel Hill, November 2012).
  • “Summits and Strike Waves: Grassroots Democracy in Plurinational Bolivia’s Political Culture.” AAA Annual Meeting (San Francisco, November 2012).
  • “Encountering, Participating in, and Supporting Bolivia’s Organic Social Movements as a Network-Style Activist Ethnographer.” SfAA Annual Meeting (Baltimore, March 2012).

2011

  • “‘There Were Neither Moors nor Christians’: Feelings of Radical Inclusion in Recent Bolivian Mass Mobilizations.” AAA Annual Meeting (Montreal, November 2011).
  • “Roadblocks versus Concession Blocks: Spatialities in Conflict in Andean Socio-environmental Conflicts.” Critical Geography Conference (Worcester, MA, November 2011).

2010

  • “Whose Cities? Claims over Urban Space in Recent Bolivian Political Conflict.” Mini-Conference on Critical Geography (Athens, GA, October 2010).
  • “Frontier Violence and Indigenous Survival: Knowledge and Strategies on Colombia’s Llanos Frontier.” Latin American History Graduate Student Conference (New York, March 2010).

2009

  • “The Power of Interruption: The Rise and Urbanization of Road Blockades in Late 20th Century Bolivia.” NECLAS Annual Meeting (Schenectady, NY, October 2009).
  • “The Power of Interruption: The Rise and Urbanization of Road Blockades in Late 20th Century Bolivia.” Works in Progress in Latin American Studies of Society and History (WiPLASH) (New York, September 2009).
  • “Direct Action Syndicalism and the Right to Strike.” Annual Graduate Student Conference, Union of Political Science Students (New York, May 2009).

2007

  • “Force, Knowledge, and Strategies for Indigenous Survival on the Llanos Frontier.” AAA Annual Meeting (Washington, November 2007).
  • “The Zapatistas and the World.” Fernand Braudel Center (Binghamton, NY, October 2007).

2005

  • “Subjectivities of Resistance.” Anarchism Now Conference (Santa Cruz, CA, May 2005).