Cristóbal Bonelli is a Chilean anthropologist and interdisciplinary scholar whose work connects environmental anthropology, science and technology studies (STS), and the environmental humanities. He is currently based in Chile, where he serves as Director of the Centre for Science, Technology and Society Studies (CECTS) at Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Santiago.

His research examines how ecological, technological, and intercultural transformations reshape territories, forms of coexistence, and the possibilities of sustaining life amid contemporary planetary crises. He has conducted long-term research across Chile, China, and Europe, with a particular focus on energy transitions, extractivism, environmental justice, and the socio-material consequences of emerging technologies.

Cristóbal leads international research collaborations while contributing to the development of science, technology and society studies in Chile and Latin America. Previously, he served as Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam, where he led the European Research Council (ERC) project Worlds of Lithium: A Transnational Study of Transitions to Post-Fossil Societies. Conducted across Chile, China, and Norway, the project examined the social and environmental consequences of global energy transitions, with Chile serving as its principal empirical field site and collaborative hub.

He currently serves on the Advisory Boards of three major ANID-funded research networks in Chile: LIONESS (Geopolitics of Lithium Off-sites: Infrastructures, Territories and Ecologies, 2024–2027), MESS (Microbial Ecosystem Services of Salt Flats: Biotechnological Potential and Environmental Threats, 2024–2027), and Socio-environmental Precarity: Economic and Cultural Responses to the Climate Crisis (2023–2026).

Based in Santiago, his current work focuses on the intersections between energy transitions, digital infrastructures, environmental justice, and territorial transformations in Chile and Latin America.

Bonelli has held two major European research grants — a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship and a European Research Council (ERC) project — both examining how ecological and technological transformations reshape contemporary forms of coexistence. As a Chilean scholar working across Europe and Latin America, he has maintained long-term academic, institutional, and personal ties with Chile while building international research networks that connect Chilean universities and research centres with leading institutions worldwide.

His Marie Skłodowska-Curie project, Invisible Waters, in collaboration with Universidad Católica del Norte, studied groundwater practices in the Atacama Desert, revealing how mining, water scarcity, and desert ecologies complicate conventional understandings of decarbonisation and environmental knowledge. The project was developed through close collaboration with Chilean institutions and researchers working in northern Chile.

Building on this foundation, his ERC project, Worlds of Lithium (WOL), also in collaboration with Universidad Catolica del Norte, investigated the societal and ecological implications of lithium extraction and battery technologies across Chile, China, and Norway. With Chile serving as its principal empirical field site and collaborative hub, the project brought together researchers and institutions from Chile, Europe, North America and Asia to examine how energy transitions reshape territories, infrastructures, and forms of life.

Through these projects, Bonelli has worked to strengthen international collaboration between Chilean institutions — including Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Universidad Católica del Norte, Universidad Alberto Hurtado and Universidad Diego Portales — and global research networks involving universities such as Stanford University, the University of California Davis, University College London and other international partners. More broadly, his work seeks to mobilise international research resources and interdisciplinary collaborations around challenges that are central to Chile’s environmental, technological and territorial futures.

Together, these projects form a long-term inquiry into the material conditions of thought, exploring how energy, matter, technology, and ecology open new spaces for interdisciplinary experimentation and public engagement.

Teaching, Supervision and Academic Leadership

Bonelli's teaching, supervision, and academic leadership emerge from the intersections of anthropology, ecology, science and technology studies (STS), and interdisciplinary experimentation. Across different institutional settings in Chile and Europe, he has explored how teaching can become a practice of attention, conceptual creativity, and collaborative inquiry into contemporary social and environmental transformations.

His courses invite students to engage with the shifting relations between humans, technologies, infrastructures, environments, and other-than-human forms of life. Rather than approaching sustainability as a matter of management or technical optimisation, his teaching examines how ecological crises, energy transitions, and technological transformations reshape territories, forms of coexistence, and possibilities for collective futures.

Over the years, he has taught undergraduate, master's, doctoral, and professional audiences in anthropology, sustainability studies, science and technology studies, medical anthropology, and interdisciplinary social research. His teaching has included courses such as Worlds in Transition, Multispecies Ecologies and Planetary Matter, Thinking with the Planet, The Politics of Sustainability, Practicing Ethnography, and Environments, Alterities and the Anthropological Imagination.

Bonelli has supervised students across a wide range of programmes, including Cultural and Social Anthropology, Research Master's in Social Sciences, International Development Studies, Medical Anthropology and Sociology, and interdisciplinary graduate programmes in Europe and Chile.

Currently based in Santiago, Chile, he combines teaching, research, and institutional leadership as Director of the Centre for Science, Technology and Society Studies (CECTS) at Universidad Alberto Hurtado, where he contributes to the development of interdisciplinary research and graduate training on science, technology, environmental change, and contemporary planetary challenges.