Chilton Tippin
Chilton Tippin is a cultural anthropology Ph.D. candidate with interests in the anthropology of water, the social lives of rivers, political ecology, immigration, and the co-production of land, watersheds, space, and place. After a year of field research funded by the Wenner Gren Foundation in 2024, he's currently writing up his dissertation on how local people mobilize to defend their communities and their watersheds.
The guiding theme of this research is to investigate how the Rio Grande/Bravo is simultaneously a river of hope and a river of violence. To that end, he grapples with themes of environmental justice, ecological violence, Indigeneity, settler colonialism, social movements, migration, embodiment, contamination, acequias, and bordering—all of which find their way materially into the waters of the Rio Grande.
His research approach is participatory and action-oriented, meaning he learns while working with water protectors, NGOs, and humanitarian volunteers on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Publications
- July 2025. “‘With What Water?’” On the nexus of drought, climate change, forced migration, and international treaty disputes along the U.S.-Mexico border and in the Rio Conchos watershed of Chihuahua. Texas Observer (Feature Story)
- March 2025. Chilton's research was featured in CU Boulder Today: “Counting hidden deaths at the U.S.’s most dangerous border crossing.”
- January 2025. “Making Migrant Death Data Count: Recommendations for Addressing An Alarming Trend in Preventable Migrant Deaths in the El Paso Sector.” HOPE Border Institute. (Report co-authored with Aimée Santillan)
- 2023. “The Mexican River Defenders Fighting for the San Pedro.” SAPIENS
- 2022. Tippin, C. L., “Ranked-out Waterscapes: an Ethnography of Resistance and Exclusion in a U.S.-Mexico Border Colonia”, Journal of Political Ecology 29(1), p.208–222.
- 2021. Tippin, C. A Tale of Two Waterscapes: American Indian Water Law and the Question of Quantification in Neighboring Western States. Journal of the Southwest 63(2), 231-254.
- 2021. Tippin, C. The Household Water Insecurity Nexus: Portraits of Hardship and Resilience in U.S-Mexico Border Colonias. Geoforum 124, 65-74.
- 2020. Hargrove, W.L., Holguin, N., Tippin, C.L. & Heyman, J.H. The Soft Path to Water: A Conservation-Based Approach to Improved Water Access and Sanitation for Rural Communities. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation75(2) 38A-44A.
Awards
2022 Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences Graduate Student Research Award