Biologist, ethnobotanist, and Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Anthropology at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
For more than fifteen years, his work has followed the living threads that connect plants, people, culture, and place across Colombia, Panama, and the wider Americas.
From documenting more than 300 traditionally used plants in the Colombian Andes to cultivating Indigenous gardens and food forests, David’s work bridges scholarship, restoration, and community action. His master’s research with the Cofán Indigenous people revealed previously undocumented diversity among the plants used within the Yagé or Ayahuasca ritual practice.
Today, his doctoral research explores how Cofán knowledge, identity, and history have developed in relation to the Yagé ritual practice. By bringing ethnobotany and ethnography into conversation, he seeks respectful forms of exchange between Indigenous and Western sciences while supporting plant propagation, cultural continuity, and community-led conservation. His work asks a vital question: how might caring for plants also sustain people, knowledge, and territories?