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Social Sciences Division
Latin American & Latino Studies
Ph.D. Candidate
Graduate
History of Art/Visual Culture
Crown College Faculty Wing
211
Merrill/Crown Faculty Services
Edward is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Latin American and Latino Studies Department, with a designated emphasis in History of Arts and Visual Culture. He holds a bachelor's degree in Sociology and a master's degree in Cultural Studies.
His research focuses on Latinx and Latin American creative labor, critical fashion and design studies, visual and material culture, politics of representation, archival theory, and colonial and decolonial studies.
His doctoral project examines how Latinx and Latin American fashion is remembered, represented, and contested through fragmented archives. It investigates how institutional regimes organize visibility, memory, labor, and value, while rethinking individual authorship and archival power through fashion-making as a site of collaboration, kinship, and futurity.
- The Decorative Arts Trust Research Grant (2026)
- Mayfield Scholarship, UCSC (2026)
- College Art Association Travel and Registration Awards (2026)
- Research Grant, Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas, UCSC (2025–2026)
- First Generation Research Award, Division of Graduate Studies, UCSC (2025)
- Lionel Cantú Memorial Award, Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas, UCSC (2025)
- Crossing Latinidades Fellowship, University of Illinois Chicago / The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (2024–2025)
- Research Cluster Grant, Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas, UCSC (2024) — Natural Cultural Worlds: Colombia and Beyond
- Research Cluster Grant, Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas, UCSC (2024) — Queerness and Visualities
- Graduate Student Co-Principal Investigator, Expanding Latinx Studies at and beyond UC Santa Cruz, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (2023–2024)
- Summer Publishing Fellowship, LALS Future Faculty Program / UC Hispanic-Serving Institutions Doctoral Diversity Initiative (2023)
- Multicampus Graduate Student Working Group Grant, UCHRI (2023–2024)
- Chancellor's Fellowship, UCSC (2022–2023)
- Second Place, National Novel Award, Bogotá Institute of the Arts (IDARTES), Colombia (2017)
- Research Scholarship, Ministry of Culture – National Library of Colombia (2016–2017)
- Excellence Scholarship, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia (2012–2013)
- Recruitment Excellence Scholarship, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia (2011–2012)
- Next Young Generation in Sciences Research Scholarship, Ministry of Science and Technology, Colombia (2011–2012)
- Best Undergraduate Thesis Award in Sociology, National University of Colombia (2010)
"Fashion and Kinship: The Latinx Politics of Creative Labor." International Symposium on New Work in Queer and Feminist Fashion Studies, University of Amsterdam, 2026
"Archival Gestures: Fragments and Memory in Latinx and Latin American Fashion." Latin American Studies Association Annual Conference (LASA), Paris, France, 2026
"Unsettling the Wardrobe: Latinx Fashion Archives and Alternative Modes of Representation in the United States." Latinx Studies Association Conference, Austin, TX, 2026
"From the Andes to Guatemala to Latinx Avant-Garde: Dress, Fashion, and Photographic Self-Representation." College Art Association Annual Conference (CAA), Chicago, IL, 2026
"Futures in the Past: The Politics and Poetics of Latin American Fashion Archives." Ghosts of the Present: Emphases and Erasures in Latin American Fashion Histories, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, London, UK, 2025
"Decolonizing the Fashion Archive, Assembling a Ruana History: The Long Resisting Process of an Undesirable Garment." Latin American Studies Association Annual Conference (LASA), San Francisco, CA, 2024
"The Colombian Ruana: Race, Meanings, and Politics of a National Garment." The Nineteenth Century Series, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, 2024
"Critical Reading of Fashion from the Global South." The Arts Association, University of the Arts London, London, UK, 2024
"Hacia los Estudios Críticos de Moda en Colombia y América Latina." X Congreso Latinoamericano de Moda, 2022
Books
Estudios de la moda en Colombia. Recorridos de una pregunta en construcción (Ed, 2022)
Nostalgias y aspiraciones. Vestir, estéticas y tránsitos de las clases medias bogotanas en la segunda mitad del siglo XX, 2021
Book Chapters
"Decolonizing Fashion, Assembling a Ruana History: Genealogies of a Resisting and Undesirable Garment." In The New Latin American Fashion Reader. Bloomsbury (forthcoming 2026)
"Redefining Brand–Artisan Collaborations: Coloniality and Transformations in Latin American Fashion." In Creating Responsible and Inclusive Fashion Narratives: Theory and Practice. Routledge (2025)
"Con ropa haciendo el amor: Moda, estéticas y políticas del reggaetón en los albores de su globalización." Universidad Santo Tomás Press (2024)
Peer-Reviewed
¡Moda Hoy! Latin American and Latinx Fashion Design Today. Fashion Theory, 2023. (Exhibition Review)
"Beauty Has No Age Anymore: Fashion and Youth in Colombia, 1970–99." The International Journal of Fashion Studies 8, no. 1 (2021): 67–84
"Estéticas en plural. La moda popular en Bogotá." Revista Costarricense de Antropología (2016): 51–68
"Muy bonito todo. Investigar imágenes y objetos contemporáneos desde la cultura mediática y la cultura popular." Campos en Ciencias Sociales: 199–217, 2016
Public Scholarship
"Trastros y Trasteos." Plural Nodo Cultural, Instituto Distrital de las Artes (IDARTES), Bogotá (2025)
"Black Is a Working-Class Color: The Latinx Politics of Wearing Black." Harvard Review of Latin America (2024)
"Colonial Legacies: The Met Museum and the Absence of Latinx Designers in Fashion Archives." The Latinx Project, New York University (2024)
"The Growing and Important Discussion About Decolonization." El País (Spain) (2023, with Carolina Rodríguez)
"Streets Are Dangerously Creative." El Malpensante (2022)
"Hermosamente feo: Estilo, moda y maneras de liberación." Cartel Urbano (2020)
"Estrella Americana: Walter Mercado y su revolución del amor." Cerosetenta (2020)
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