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Dr von Vacano is spending the academic year 2024-5 at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He is affiliated with the Environmental Change and Security Program and the Latin American Program to work on his book on lithium in Latin America. Dr. von Vacano's work centers on the intersection of Comparative Politics, Public Policy, and Political Theory. He was the recipient of a 2018 “Texas A&M Chancellor and Board of Regents ‘Nationally and Internationally Recognized Faculty” award. He is currently focused on the geopolitics of Latin American lithium in the global energy security space.
He received his doctorate in Politics from Princeton University and his master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University. He studied in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University. Before that, he attended Franco Boliviano School in La Paz, Bolivia.
He is the Chief Editor of the Oxford University Press book series “Studies in Comparative Political Theory,” which examines issues in political ethics from inter-cultural, non-Western perspectives. He has been a Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University; a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University; and a Member of the School of Social Science of the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, NJ.
He is the author of The Color of Citizenship: Race, Modernity and Latin American/Hispanic Political Thought (Oxford University Press, January 2012), which explores the intersection of race and citizenship in the modern era; and The Art of Power: Machiavelli, Nietzsche and the Making of Aesthetic Political Theory (Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, November 2006), on how spectacle and appearances trump ethics in modern politics. He has written various articles, including a piece on “The Scope of Comparative Political Theory” for the Annual Review of Political Science in 2015. He has also published on populism and presidential power from a Comparative Political Theory perspective.
Oxford University Press published his book, Reconsidering Race: Social Science Perspectives on Racial Categories in the Age of Genomics in June 2018. The edited volume, which has a Preface from Henry Louis Gates, Jr., provides different views of how the social sciences must engage with health policy and the natural sciences in light of recent genomics research that has impacted certain accounts of ‘race.’
He is completing the manuscript for Power over Energy: Lithium, Bolivia, and the Global Struggle for the New Green Economy (Under contract, Oxford University Press, Heretical Thought Book Series. first draft 250 pp., expected Winter 2025). The book examines the political economy of sustainable development focused on Bolivia’s lithium (part of the 'Lithium Triangle' with Argentina and Chile) and the global competition for its control (China, Russia, US). It is partly based on his personal experience as an advisor to President Luis Arce of Bolivia between 2019 and 2022 (including organizing meetings with Bernie Sanders and Joseph Stiglitz). It employs Comparative Political Theory to examine Bolivia’s political ideology as the framework of the nation’s lithium debates.
Prior to joining the faculty at Texas A&M University, Dr. von Vacano served on the faculties of Hunter College CUNY, Vassar College, and Williams College. He was also a Visiting Scholar in Latin American Studies at Columbia University. Professor von Vacano has been the recipient of an NEH faculty grant in Latin American philosophy; the University Center for Human Values Graduate Fellowship at Princeton University; and grants from the Spencer Foundation, Tinker Foundation, and Mellon Foundation as well as from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he studied Public Policy of Political and Economic Development.
He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other venues. His work on the lithium sector has been cited in outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Deutsche Welle, El Pais, The Guardian, and The New York Times.
von Vacano is also interested in the globalization of soccer. He is Founder and Organizer of the Yale and Princeton Soccer Conferences. He also covers international association football tournaments for various media outlets since 1990. As a photographer and analyst he has covered events such as the UEFA Champions League, Copa America, and Euro 2016 for NBC/Telemundo, Código Deporte (Argentina), and El Deber (Bolivia) among others. He is a lifelong supporter of Bolivar and Chelsea (since 1997) and still plays for Rayados FC and Potomac FC (now as a forward, to run less).
He is originally from Bolivia, and moved to the United States as a political refugee in his youth during the Garcia Meza military dictatorship with the help of Amnesty International.
