José Castro-Sotomayor

Biography

Research practitioner with a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of New Mexico (U.S.A.), with emphasis on environmental and intercultural dynamics of human and more-than-human communication. He co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity (2020), a collection recognized with the Tarla Rai Peterson Book Award in Environmental Communication (National Communication Association. U.S.A.). This transdisciplinary volume aims to identify, examine, and reflect upon the cultivations, constraints, and forces of ecocultural emergent identities in our everyday and extraordinary lives and projected toward regenerative Earth futures. From an ecocultural perspective, he designs and applies identity-based participatory communication models for community building, conflict resolution, and decision- and policy-making processes. His research examines transversal forms of communication, agency, and dissent that contribute to environmental peacebuilding.

He is a Ph.D. Fellow of the Latin American and Iberian Institute and a Fellow of Engaged Pedagogy, both at the University of New Mexico, USA. His doctoral research was recognized with the Culture, Change, and Social Justice Award (Communication and Journalism Department, University of New Mexico, 2018). He has delivered competitively selected papers at international, national, and regional conferences. In 2018, he received the Student Top Paper Award from the National Communication Association (USA, 2018). He has published articles in peer-reviewed journals in English and Spanish, peer-reviewed book chapters, and book reviews. He has published English-Spanish translations of academic books in economics and political science subjects. He collaborates as a consultant with the environmental NGO, Fundación Ser Ambiente, Ecuador.