09/01/2026
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Alex Diamond, our newest Assistant Professor! 🎉
As an ethnographer, photographer, and documentary filmmaker, Alex’s research explores the connections between drugs, state policy, violence, and economic transformation, centering the everyday experiences of people navigating these forces.
Alex’s first book, Governing the Excluded: Rural Livelihoods Beyond Coca in Colombia’s Peace Laboratory, examines a landmark peace process from the perspective of farmers working to transform their region from violence to peace, guerrilla rule to state authority, and coca cultivation to legal agriculture.
Alex is currently writing High Stakes: Cannabis, Crime, Capitalism, and Politics, which tells the stories of people who grow, sell, and advocate for cannabis while examining how legalization has reshaped both legal and illegal cannabis economies.
We’re excited to welcome a scholar whose interdisciplinary work brings together ethnography, visual storytelling, politics, and sociology to illuminate how communities experience and respond to major social and economic transformations.
Welcome to Stony Brook, Dr. Diamond! 🌊🐺❤️