Timmy Vilgiate

Background

About Timmy Vilgiate

I am passionate about teaching, especially for communities or groups of individuals that have been marginalized in traditional educational settings, along with writing and editing. While working as a paraeducator for Colorado Springs School District 11, I researched and drafted a proposal for social and emotional learning programs. Experiences conducting phone surveys, canvassing, and facilitating small group discussions have given me good communication and listening skills. I also have a strong background for customer service related positions through past jobs in food service and retail. Some of my other skills include transcription/captioning, translation, and conflict resolution. In my free time, I play music and paint, and have been involved in local arts organizations in both Austin and Colorado Springs. In 2020, I helped start a small cooperative mutual aid group in Colorado Springs which continues to raise funds to support the homeless community in the city with food and other survival gear. I wrote the majority of the bylaws for this organization while also coordinating the initial registration with the Colorado Secretary of State and its fundraising infrastructure. I am currently in the third year of the PhD program at UT Austin. My research focuses on the history of sacred plants and fungi used by Indigenous communities of Southern Mexico, and their construction into categories like “hallucinogen,” “psychedelic,” or “entheogen” by Western scientists. Drawing on training in cultural studies, ethnography, environmental history, and neuropharmacology, I connect outside interest in Indigenous psychoactive flora to broader structural contexts of settler colonialism and the exploitation of natural resources. The fields for my comprehensive exam include sections on the political ecology of drugs and altered states of consciousness, coloniality in Greater Mexico, and the history of science, technology, and medicine. Combined with my research experience in West Africa and my experience as a teaching assistant in multiple regional subfields, this training has prepared me to teach and design course material for a wide range of topics.