Areas of Interest:

Affect Theory, Moral and Political Anthropology, Masculinities, Military Studies, Psychological Anthropology, State Ethnography, Latin America (Southern Cone)

Field Research Plans/History:

Nicolás is a doctoral student working at the interface of moral and political anthropology, affect theory, and gender studies, focusing on the affective and ethical dimensions of violence on the one hand, and the moral and political governance of the latter on the other.

His dissertation focuses on the past and present lives of former intelligence agents, military officers, and civil collaborators of the repressive apparatus during the Chilean dictatorship (1973-1990) and their international ramifications throughout the continent and beyond. In particular, this project brings forth the ethical and psychic intimacy of the secret police to explore the aging of the dictatorship and its perpetrators, and their heterochronic becomings from the dictatorial times to the unstable textures of the present. This is framed within the historical threads of silence, secrecy, and impunity that persist in the everyday life of the region.

Combining dreams, archival records, literary and photographic creations, oral histories, and ethnographic fieldwork in Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay, Nicolás interrogates temporalities, institutional collaborations, political complicities, and the endurance of violence in Chile’s unfinished transition to democracy.

Nicolás's previous research, The Moral Composition of Punishment: An Ethnography of the Carceral Condition in Rapa Nui, inquires about the forms and possibilities of life in the so-called ‘happiest prison in the world.’ At the crossroads of affect theory, colonial and postcolonial studies, and critical moral anthropology, Nicolás explores the everyday life of the penal continuum in Easter Island from a polyphonic and multimodal point of view. Some of this work has been published in English in Current Anthropology, and a full ethnographic book in Spanish is currently in press, expected to be published by LOM in 2025.

Awards:

2023 Best Essay in Latin American Visual Culture Studies — Latin American Studies Association (LASA)

Teaching History

Assistant Instructor | ANT 342 Anthropology of Law | Spring 2024

Membership/activities in graduate student events or organizations

Journals

Cultural Anthropology — Editorial Assistant (2022—)

Professional Associations

American Anthropological Association

Colegio de Antropólogos y Antropólogas de Chile

European Association of Social Anthropologists
            Latin American Studies Association

In Princeton

Program in Latin American Studies (PLAS)

Organizer IHUM Reading Group The Authoritarian Vein