Areas of Expertise

Legal pluralism; Indigenous Peoples; Biodiversity; Extractive industries

Brief Bio

Luisa Castaneda-Quintana is a Vanier Scholar and a Doctoral Candidate in Comparative Law at McGill University. She is a Colombian lawyer with over 10 years of progressive human rights expertise in Indigenous Peoples, collective rights, and biodiversity at national and global levels. She is the creator of the Dialogues on Indigenous Peoples' Territories at McGill University. In 2021, she received the National Scholarship Vanier awarded by the Social Sciences, Humanities, and Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

She has gained experience working for international cooperation organizations and civil society. She also has worked as a lawyer for Indigenous Peoples in Colombia, including the Indigenous Peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, on environmental, territorial management, and governance issues, orienting her work on strategic litigation. She worked at the FAO Indigenous Peoples Unit in headquarters as Indigenous peoples’ rights specialist and with the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of safe drinking water and sanitation.

She currently works with the Chairperson of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). Luisa holds a Master’s in Law from the Libre University in Colombia and an LLM in Comparative Law and Economics from the International University College of Turin and University of Turin in Italy.