Bio
Andrea Sánchez-Castañeda is a cultural anthropologist working in the fields of critical Indigenous studies and urban environmental studies, with a focus on Latin America. For over a decade, she has collaborated closely with the Muysca of Suba—an urban Indigenous community in Bogotá, Colombia—exploring the deep entanglements between indigeneity, territory, nature, and the sacred.
Andrea employs visual methodologies as both a research tool and a collaborative practice of knowledge production, advancing forms of epistemic justice by centering Muysca ways of seeing, knowing, and representing their world. Through co-created visual work, she contributes to rendering visible the community’s lived struggles, sacred practices, and cosmologies, while challenging extractive modes of research and opening space for sensing and engaging Indigenous presence within urban environments.
She earned her PhD in Global and Sociocultural Studies (Anthropology track) and her MA in Religious Studies from Florida International University, and she serves on the board of the Global Indigenous Forum (GIF).
Her current research continues this collaborative work with the Muysca, documenting the ceremonial use of sacred plant medicines and their vital role in Indigenous revitalization and territorial defense in Bogotá.