Miguel Rojas Sotelo

Miguel Rojas-Sotelo works at the intersection of critical human geography, ethnic studies, visual anthropology, environmental and health humanities and cultural theory. As scholar, filmmaker, visual artist, and media activist he studies how communities of color (indigenous and migrants) and natural spaces are shaped by modernity and how they mobilize to adapt and resist. He is particularly interested in how such people(s) articulate their archival knowledge, racial and class politics, the spatiality of those processes, and how they are manifest in the landscape via visual, audiovisual, oral, and textual narratives. 

Miguel Rojas-Sotelo, is a doctor (PhD) in Visual Studies, Contemporary Art, and Cultural Theory; with a M.A in Modern and Contemporary Art (U. Pittsburgh) and MFA on Visual Arts (U. de los Andes, 1995). His bachelor's degree is in visual arts with sub-major in History and Philosophy.
Miguel was the Colombian Ministry of Culture first Visual Arts Director (1997-2001), where he worked building participatory cultural policy. Miguel has worked independently as film maker, curator, author, and critic ever since. 

His areas of interest are: environmental visual humanities, health humanities, intercultural visualities, contemporary art and subaltern studies, the global south and decolonial aesthetics. 
Currently works and teaches at the Duke University Center for International and Global Studies and Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (is also affiliated with the Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies with UNC Chapel Hill). Miguel was visiting faculty at Duke Kunshan University at the International Master in Environmental Policy (IMEP) and the undergraduate program. Miguel is a fellow Nicholas School of the Environment fellow.  

Miguel is founder of Water Towns Environmental Film and Arts Festival . 环保电影艺术节(China), and director of  the NC Latin American Film and New Media Festival (USA), part of the selection committe at Full Frame since 2010. At Duke-UNC consortium Miguel coordinates interdisciplinary working groups, directs the Hemispheric Indigeneity project, co-directs and co-leads the Working Group on Environmental Humanities: Narrating Nature at Duke University, also is affiliated to the Health Humanities Lab.
In 2017–2018, Rojas-Sotelo received Colombia’s National Prize in Art and Essay Criticism for Soberanía visual en Abya Yala, a foundational text on Indigenous visual sovereignty. His recent publications include Territorio encarnado: Ejercicios de soberanía visual (2023) and the co-edited multi-volume series Mingas de la Imagen: Estudios Ecocríticos, Indígenas e Interculturales (2022). His scholarship has been published by Duke University Press, Routledge, Palgrave, the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, and leading Latin American academic presses.

Alongside his academic work, he has produced exhibitions, documentaries, and collaborative media projects with Indigenous artists and filmmakers in the Americas and beyond. Recent projects include SACBÉ: The Path of Wellbeing (2017), Guardians of the Huaihe River (2020), a six-part film series on intercultural poetics (2022), and the graphic novel Always Here | Siempre Aquí (2024), a visual history of Indigenous presence and resistance in the Occoneechee territory (present-day Durham, NC).

Rojas-Sotelo is a Colombian citizen, born in Bacatá (Bogotá) and raised between the city and the rural mountains of Cundinamarca.

Tuesdays and Thursdays 9-11am
2019 Languages Building
Duke West Campus
Durham.