Introducing... Dr Olivia Arigho-Stiles

Olivia Arigho-Stiles is an interdisciplinary researcher of Indigenous histories and the rural world in Bolivia. She completed her PhD in Sociology at the University of Essex in July 2022. She holds a BA in History from the University of Oxford and an MA in Latin American Studies from UCL.  Her doctoral project addresses the question as to why and how discourses on the other-than-human become so important for Indigenous movements across the highlands in the twentieth century.

She is interested in the processes by which radical Indigenous politics in Bolivia repurposed the environment as a sphere of political contention. Her work engages with decolonial theory, environmental history and post-humanism. She is currently working on developing her thesis into a monograph exploring the nexus between Indigenous and environmental politics in Bolivia in the twentieth century.

Outside academia, Olivia is a Contributing Editor at Alborada, a magazine of Latin American culture and politics. Prior to joining UCL, Olivia taught at the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico in Mexico City.

At the IAS, Olivia will work with her fellow Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dr Adriana Suárez Delucchi, to contribute to the work of the Indigenous Ecologies and Environmental Crisis research cluster through a project exploring contestations around plurinationalism in historical perspective in Bolivia. She will work with Indigenous and campesino organisations in Bolivia as well as using archival and audiovisual sources.