Faculty

Profile

Columba González-Duarte is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research.

Pursuing a greater understanding of the relationship between monarch butterflies and the people and communities they interact with has carried Dr. Columba Gonzalez-Duarte far, connecting her roots in Mexico to Toronto and to her new home in New York City.    Through her research, Columba examines the conservation dynamics of the monarch butterfly across three nations, analyzing the connections between NAFTA's agri-food industry, labor migration, and the decline of the monarch population. She also collaborates with scientific and Indigenous communities in Canada, the United States, and Mexico to document their knowledge and ways of relating to migratory insects. Dr. Gonzalez-Duarte's academic practice is shaped by feminist ethics of care, promoting a different form of justice that values the well-being of both humans and more-than-humans during their migratory journeys across North America. To gain a deeper understanding of her research, publications, student projects, and media, please visit www.columbagonzalez.com.   

Degrees Held

Dr. González-Duarte holds a PhD degree in socio-cultural anthropology, from the University of Toronto, with a collaborative degree at the School of Environment. After graduating in 2019, she gained a postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. She was an Assistant Professor at MSVU in Halifax NS before moving the anthropology department at the NSSR.  

Recent Publications

  Gonzalez-Duarte, Columba. 2022. “Sister Parks: North American Coloniality and The Monarch Butterfly.” Allegra Lab, One-Shots Essays, June.   

———. 2021 “Butterflies, Organized Crime, and ‘Sad Trees’: A Critique of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve Program in a Context of Rural Violence.” World Development 142 (June): 105420. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105420.

  ———. 2017 Resisting Monsanto: Monarch butterflies and cyber-actors. In Resistance to the Neoliberal Agri-Food Regime. Ed Alessandro Bonanno and Steven Wolf. Pp 165-179. New York: Routledge   

———. 2012 Hegemonia local y mercado de tierras para migrantes, la construccion del lugar en el Lower Rio Grande Valley, Texas. Macip, R. F. (Compilador) Al que a buen arbol se arrima, buena sombra le cobija. Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades. Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla/Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia. Puebla    

Short essays, Opinion Pieces and online content.   

Morales-Magaña and Columba Gonzalez-Duarte.

2023. “Caring as Implication: Reflections through More-Than-Human and Feminists Perspectives”. In “A Sign of Our times: Caring in an Unsettling World”, edited by Magdalena Zegarra Chiappori and Salwa Tareen, American Ethnologist website, 3 August 2023 [https://americanethnologist.org/online-content/collections/uncaring-world/caring-as-implication]   G

Gonzalez-Duarte, Columba

2022a. “Borders of Care: Ethnography with the Monarch Butterfly.” American Ethnologist Online, May 2022. https://americanethnologist.org/features/reflections/borders-of-care-ethnography-with-the-monarch-butterfly.  

———. 2022b. “Op-Ed: The Parallel Struggles of Human and Monarch Migration.” Los Angeles Times, August 19, 2022.

 Gonzalez-Duarte, Columba, and Manuel Ureste. 2021. “Indigenous Communities in Mexico Take up Arms to Defend the Monarch Forest.” NACLA, March 24, 2021. https://nacla.org/mexico-monarchs-organized-crime.  

Podcasts  González-Duarte in conversation with Jessica Yaquinto “Convergent Migrations of Humans and Monarch Butterflies” - Ep 44 The Archaeology Podcast Network. https://www.columbagonzalez.com/post/penne-allarrabbiata Podcast featuring my research by the US’ based organization Heritage Voices. 

Research Interests

Multispecies, migration, ethics of care, borders, North America.

Awards And Honors

2023 Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (Book Fellowship). 

2022 MSVU Teaching Release Award 

2019 School of Environment Labatt fellowship

2016 School of Environment Krause Fellowship

2015 Centre for Ethnography University of Toronto Writing Award 

2013 Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (Dissertation Fieldwork Grant)

2011 CONACYT International fellowship 

2008 MA honours award  2004 BA honours award