Cohen Hall

Sebastián Gil-Riaño

 Sebastián Gil-Riaño

Associate Professor

I am a historian of transnational science focusing on scientific conceptions of race, culture, and indigeneity in the twentieth century. Through multi-sited and transnational perspectives my work investigates how scientific articulations of human diversity have been used to both legitimize and confront political formations in the modern world.

My first book The Remnants of Race Science: UNESCO and Economic Development in the Global South demonstrates the influence of ideas from the Global South on UNESCO’s race campaign, illuminating its relationship to notions of modernization and economic development. 

Education

Ph.D. University of Toronto

M.A. University of Toronto

B.A.Hons. University of King's College, Dalhousie University

Research Interests

Global histories of race science, anti-racism in science, postcolonial studies of science, indigeneity and science, history of international development, history of the human sciences, history of food and nutrition, Latin American history

Selected Publications

Books

Sebastián Gil-Riaño, The Remnants of Race Science: UNESCO and Economic Development in the Global South. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2023).

Selected Peer Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

Sebastián Gil-Riaño, "Modest Witnesses of Violence: Salvage Ethnography and the Capture of Aché Children," in Empire, Colonialism, and the Human Sciences: Troubling Encounters in the Americas and Pacific, edited by Adam Warren, Julia E. Rodriguez, and Stephen T. Casper, 93–120. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024).

Sebastián Gil-Riaño, "Risky migrations: Race, Latin eugenics, and Cold War development in the International Labor Organization’s Puno–Tambopata project in Peru, 1930–60." History of Science. August 2021. doi:10.1177/00732753211035283 

Sebastián Gil-Riaño, “Becoming an Area Expert During the Cold War: Americanism and Lusotropicalismo in the Transnational Career of Anthropologist Charles Wagley, 1939–1971,” in Cold War Social And Behavioral Sciences in Transnational Contexts, Mark Solovey and Christian Daye, Eds, (Palgrave, UK: 2021). pp.127-159.

Projit Bihari Mukharji, Myrna Perez Sheldon, Elise K. Burton, Sebastián Gil-Riaño, Terence Keel, Emily Merchant, Wangui Muigai, Ahmed Ragab, and Suman Seth, "A Roundtable Discussion on Collecting Demographics Data," Isis 111, no. 2 (June 2020): 310-353. https://doi.org/10.1086/709484

Sebastián Gil-Riaño, “Relocating Anti-Racist Science: the 1950 UNESCO Statement on Race and Economic Development in the Global South.” The British Journal for the History of Science, 2018, 1–23. doi:10.1017/S0007087418000286.

Sebastián Gil-Riaño, “Redemptive Ancestries: Human Population Genetics, Sex and Antiracism." Social History of Medicine 30, no. 2 (2017): 448-454.

Sebastián Gil-Riaño and Sarah E. Tracy, “Developing Constipation: Dietary Fibre, Western Disease, and Industrial Carbohydrates, 1968-1984." Global Food History 2, no.2, (2016): 179-209.

“Sociology,” in A Companion to the History of American Science, edited by Georgina M. Montgomery and Mark A. Largent. (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), 263-275.

“Perturbed by “race”: Antiracism, Science, and Education in UNESCO during the Cold War,” in UNESCO Without Borders: Educational Campaigns for International Understanding, edited by Aigul Kulnazarova and Christian Ydesen. (Routledge Press, 2016)

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