[1] Since 2006 Colas held a position as assistant professor in the Anthropology Department of the College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.
As the son of a German diplomat,[4] he lived in several countries as a child, including a period spent in Mexico where he acquired his abiding interest and fascination with Maya civilization and culture.
[10] While a doctoral student at Bonn, Colas was awarded two stipendary grants from the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (the national academic foundation of Germany) to support his research.
This project, registered with the DFG as "Depolitisierte Ethnizität und subalterner Widerstand: Die yukatekischen Maya von San Antonio, Cayo District, Belize", involved ethnographic and sociolinguistic research among contemporary Maya communities, and continued on after he relocated to Nashville in 2006 to accept a position as assistant professor in anthropology at Vanderbilt University.
His younger sister Marie Christine Colas who was visiting from Switzerland was also critically wounded in the same incident; she died later in hospital from her injuries.