About the presentation: This presentation examines how the Colombian state asserts its presence in a public school located in a guerrilla-controlled area. It focuses on three specific modes of governance: the relentless extraction of data and information, the subtractive diversion of financial resources, and the immobilization—or prevention—of social action through institutional vacuums. The data reveal often-overlooked ties linking the school to the broader educational system and show how these connections shape the educational landscape in which administrators, teachers, and students interact. In doing so, the presentation tempers assumptions about the absence of state authority in guerrilla-controlled areas. Instead, it highlights the sometimes suffocating force of the state, its effects on everyday school life, and the social practices through which administrators and educators position themselves as agents of the school’s destiny.
About the presenter: Diana Rodríguez-Gómez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with affiliations in Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies (LACIS) and the Chicanx/Latinx Studies Program. With a regional focus on Latin America, her scholarship examines trans-local processes of state-building and education policy-making in contexts marked by high levels of political violence. Her work has been published in the American Educational Research Journal, Comparative Education Review, Ethnography and Education, International Migration Review, Globalisation, Societies and Education, and the Journal on Education in Emergencies. Her research has been supported by the Council on Anthropology and Education of the American Anthropological Association, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Spencer/National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellowship, and, most recently, a Vilas Early Career Investigator Award.