Biography
Lupe Alberto Flores is a cultural anthropologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington. He is interested in how borders, migration, surveillance technologies, law and society intersect across issues of race, gender, class, non/citizenship, transnational solidarity and resistance. Lupe’s manuscript, Surveilling Im/mobilities, ethnographically investigates the bordering effects of asylum policies and digital innovation projects along the migrant trail in Mexico that underscore the fraught entanglements between digital security states and humanitarian interventions in the management of global migration through the Americas. By juxtaposing the affective encounters between differently positioned actors – asylum-seeking migrants, Mexican activists and aid workers, American state actors and software engineers, even cultural icons such as Kiko from the sitcom El Chavo del Ocho – he showcases how boundary-making practices as emergent state and cultural forms are enacted, experienced and contested across the digital Mexico-US borderlands.
Lupe received his PhD in sociocultural anthropology from Rice University in 2024. His research and writing have been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Hulbert Center for Southwest Studies at Colorado College, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the School for Advanced Research. His latest experimental piece can be read in Anthropology and Humanism.
While Lupe won’t be on campus during the 2024-2025 year, please feel free to reach out with any questions about course content or community outreach and research opportunities.