Department
School
Expertise
Dr. Duica, a native of Colombia, brings deep experience in conflict studies with field research design, implementation, information analysis, and dissemination. Her research topics include hybrid governance, insurgent technologies, environmental crimes, rural development, war ecology, illegal armed groups and indigenous communities.
Dr. Duica began her career analyzing patterns of land dispossession by Colombia's illegal armed actors and conducting fieldwork along the borders with Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru. She supported the implementation of post conflict policies on land titling, rural development and state building in challenging ecological contexts in Colombia’s Pacific, Caribbean, and Amazon regions. She assessed the main human rights challenges in Colombian departments heavily affected by coca crops and drug trafficking (UNODC) and main violence challenges for vulnerable claimants of dispossessed territories within restitution processes (USAID); and identified patterns used by illegal armed actors to seize lands including the use of cattle, woods, palms and other kind of agriculture and livestock (Open Society Institute). She also researched FARC guerrilla strategies used to grab lands in fragile ecosystems (Universidad de los Andes-law faculty), and about hybrid governance on Colombia’s southern border (CUNY University).
Dr. Duica has worked with national, regional and international stakeholders coordinating joint actions, following up projects, and evaluating public policies. She coordinated work teams within the Colombian government (Ministry of Agriculture, Defense, National Planning Department, National Ombudsman Office and National Comptroller Office) and also within international agencies (USAID, IOM, UNODC and Swiss Cooperation) and consulting firms as Ernst and Young. Currently, she is a researcher at the Baruch College, CUNY, consultant at the Foundation for Conservation and Development in the Colombian Amazon and lecturer in the anthropology department at The Catholic University of America in D.C
Selected Publications
Arias, Desmond and Duica, Liliana,“The Plant that Replaced the State:” Aspiration and Anxiety amid Crime and Conflict in Putumayo, Colombia. Special issue, "Illegal Futures: Hope and Aspiration in Criminalized Markets". In Latin American Politics and Society. Cambridge University Press. 2020
Duica Amaya, Liliana, Good practices, obstacles and learned lessons in the post judgement decissions by the Law restitution judge. Dialogue on land restitution. Organization of American States-The Mission to Support the Peace Process in Colombia, Land Restitution Unit, National University, Sweden International Cooperation, United States Agency for International Development. Bogota, August, 2016
Duica Amaya, Liliana et al. Dos investigadores dialogan sobre construcción de paz. Revista de estudios sociales No. 56. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales Abril-Junio 2016. P. 122-129. ISSN 0123-885X eISSN 1900-5180
Alejandro Reyes Posada and Liliana Duica Amaya – book co-author-, Guerreros y Campesinos el despojo de tierras en Colombia. Editorial Norma Bogotá, 2009. Michael Jiménez Award Latin American Studies Association (LASA), Colombia Section. Toronto, Canadá 2010.
Liliana Duica Amaya and Alejandro Reyes Posada, Identification of collective agents Responsible of land abandonment in the municipalities of Colombia. Consultancy financed Land and territories Protection Project. Presidential Agency for Social Action and International Cooperation –Acción Social-. 2009.
Liliana Duica Amaya and Alejandro Reyes Posada, Land Dispossession because of illegal armed actors -paramiliaries- in Colombia. Research and Monitoring Center on Drugs and Crime. Economy Department, Universidad del Rosario and Open Society Institute, Soros Foundations Network. Bogotá, May, 2008.
Liliana Duica Amaya and Alejandro Reyes Posada, Evaluation of the expropriation policy in rural areas. Financed by Universidad del Rosario and Open Society Institute. Research and Monitoring Center on Drugs and Crime. Economy Department, Universidad del Rosario. January, 2007
Liliana Duica, Alejandro Reyes and Francisco Thoumi Drug trafficking along Colombian borders. Dirección Nacional de Estupefacientes and Research and Monitoring Center on Drugs and Crime. Economy Department, Universidad del Rosario. Bogotá 2005.