Paulo Ilich Bacca has dedicated his life to interweaving ancestral philosophies with contemporary knowledge to promote a more just and sustainable world. His work has led him to collaborate with indigenous organizations and universities in Australia, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and the United States. In these spaces, he has fostered intercultural dialogues, co-authorships between indigenous and non-indigenous individuals, and the decolonization of curricula through new approaches to learning and teaching. Inspired by mountains and rivers, and guided by his field journals, Paulo transforms his experiences into a multifaceted body of work that includes academic articles, educational texts, intercultural guides, and journalistic chronicles. Over the past decade, he has developed the idea of indigenizing international law, an approach that integrates Andean and Amazonian thought to reimagine legal systems in the face of the global climate crisis.

Paulo holds a law degree from the National University of Colombia and a PhD in ethnography from the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. He has served as a postdoctoral researcher funded by the European Research Council and as a Fulbright scholar at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Paulo contributes to  El Espectador and Gaceta magazine (Colombia); Arena magazine (Australia); The Latin American Diaries and Naked Punch (United Kingdom); and the Blog of the American Philosophical Association (US). Currently, he serves as deputy director of Dejusticia and professor at Javeriana University.