Dr. Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo

Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo is an anthropologist and curator working on social justice issues through interdisciplinary research, teaching, and multi-media knowledge transfer and praxis. Straddling academic, curatorial, and activist practices, her work spans critical areas of memory, imagination, media and politics, political emotions, solidarity, ethics, and decoloniality. Through an interdisciplinary lens, she explores the intersections of these fields, seeking innovative approaches to investigate, theorize, and address pressing social issues, with a particular focus on processes and dynamics of dehumanization and rehumanization that underlie violence, inequalities, and resistance. She has published extensively on these topics and given numerous keynote lectures, paper presentations, and workshops, all over the world. Most recently, she co-edited the book Thinking with the South: Reframing Research Collaboration Amid Decolonial Imperatives and Challenges (2023, DeGruyter).

Currently a substitute professor of public anthropology at the University of Bremen in Germany, Rosa has taught at Humboldt University of Berlin’s Institute of Asian and African Studies, Free University Berlin’s Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies, and the University of the Philippines’ Department of Anthropology and Department of Behavioral Sciences. She was also a curator at the House of World Cultures and an indigenous rights advocate for the NGO Anthropology Watch, Inc.

She obtained her PhD in Anthropology (Summa Cum Laude) from Free University Berlin..