Lupe Alberto Flores

Lupe Alberto Flores is a cultural anthropologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. He specializes in the anthropology of borders and the state, critical ethnic and migration studies, Chicanx/Latinx Studies, feminist surveillance studies and science and technology studies. 

Lupe's current book project, Digital In/Security States: Innovation, Asylum Governance and Algorithmic Violence Along the Migrant Trail, is a multi-sited ethnography of how digital innovation and humanitarian interventions intersect through the development of new technologies for asylum and migration governance in Mexico and the United States. It scrutinizes the transnational state security logics behind the design and implementation of algorithmic systems such as CBP One™ and COMAR Digital, shedding light on their reconfiguration of border violence and sociocultural impacts on everyday life along the migrant trail. By connecting the stories of different social actors—such as software engineers, aid workers, asylum seekers and even Latinx cultural icons—Digital In/Security States traces shifts in migration governmentality in the digital age, demonstrating how algorithmic border violence manifests across political, sociotechnical, expressive and popular cultural forms, how it layers onto narco-violencia and engenders techno-disobedience in the extended Mexico-US borderlands. 

Lupe earned his PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology at Rice University, where he also completed certificates in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Critical and Cultural Theory. His research and writing have been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Hulbert Center for Southwest Studies, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the School for Advanced Research.