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Chilton Tippin (Cultural Anthropology, PhD Candidate)

My research explores themes of climate change, megadrought, water contamination, colonization, border violence, river-based resistance movements, and the contested meanings of water and rivers along the binational Rio Grande/Bravo watershed. In 2024, I spent a year in three geographic regions of the river, conducting multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork as I organized with activists and small farmers mobilizing to defend water in Northern New Mexico, the El Paso–Juárez Borderlands, and Chihuahua, Mexico’s Rio Conchos Valley. My dissertation examines how the Rio Grande/Bravo is a site of widespread ecological violence that nevertheless inspires grassroots movements in defense of water, communities, and place-based livelihoods.