Carolina Osorio Gil

About

Born in Bogotá, Colombia and a long-time Ithaca resident, Carolina Osorio Gil completed her BA in Cognitive Psychology from Cornell University (2002) and an MA in Early Childhood Teaching and Curriculum with a concentration in Gifted Learning from Columbia University Teachers College (2010). She is an actress, director, chef, and community organizer and is the founder and former director of CULTURA Ithaca, a Latinx cultural organization in Ithaca, NY.

Carolina's research focuses on the general themes of knowledge, power, and epistemic justice — and she centers indigenous and BIPOC scholars in her research and writing. She is interested in decolonial scholarship, and is involved in several interdisciplinary academic collaborations working towards decolonizing higher ed. Combining her training in pedagogy and theater, she is developing a story-based theater methodology for accessing and co-creating land-based knowledges and capabilities with campesina/o communities in Colombia and Mexico. In 2022, she joined the Human Development and Capabilities Association and is working towards contributing to participatory methods to operationalize Amartya Sen's Capabilities Approach in the context of Latin American resistance movements to large-scale development projects.

Featured Research Projects

• Diosas del Agua/Goddesses of Water (An Interactive Script): Women's Collaborative Water Work & Knowledge Sharing through Story-Based Theater in The Shape of Us: Water Ways and Movements Public: A Journal of Imagining America, Vol 7, Issue 1, Syracuse Unbound (Master's thesis)
• AguaKinesis - a transnational, multi-disciplinary process on water and indigenous knowledge

Committee Members

• Scott Peters
• Sofia Villenas 
• Debra Castillo