Most recently, Dr von Vacano was at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He was affiliated with the Environmental Change and Security Program and the Latin American Program, where he finished a book on Latin American energy politics entitled Power over Energy: Lithium, Bolivia, and Green Geopolitics (Oxford UP, expected 2026). He is currently focused on critical minerals policy, politics, and ethics, especially in the "Lithium Triangle" of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile in relation to supply chains in the Americas.  

He received his doctorate in Politics from Princeton University and a master’s degree in economics and public policy from Harvard University's Kennedy School. He studied in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University. Before that, he attended Franco Boliviano School in La Paz, Bolivia.

He has written two other books, The Color of Citizenship: Race, Modernity and Latin American Political Thought (Oxford UP, 2012) and The Art of Power: Machiavelli, Nietzsche and Aesthetic Political Theory (Rowman, 2006). He also edited the volume Reconsidering Race (Oxford UP. 2018). He has published in the Annual Review of Political Science and other journals.

He is the Founding 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 has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other venues. His work, especially on critical minerals, has been cited in outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Deutsche Welle, El Pais, The Guardian, and The New York Times. He is a Contributor to the Buenos Aires Herald.

Von Vacano is also interested in the globalization of soccer. He is Founder and Organizer of the Yale and Princeton Soccer Conferences. He has covered 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 Illimani FC in the DC area."