Jennifer L. Burrell

Office: Arts & Sciences Building, Room
Ph: (518) 442-4707
Fax: (518) 442-5710
E-mail: jburrell@albany.edu

Ph.D, New School for Social Research (2005)

Interests: political economy, structural and political violence, human rights, forensic anthropology, transitional states, migration, development, gender, neoliberalization

Areas: Mesoamerica and Latin America

Curriculum Vitae

Research Statement

My research focuses on conflict, violence and struggles as a means of understanding political and economic lives and livelihood strategies. Since 1994, I have researched power, politics and state formations in Todos Santos Cuchumatán, a Mam Maya community in northwestern Guatemala, an investigation that includes how some of the most pressing concerns of post-war period, such as lynching and gangs, arise and are experienced locally.  I am currently working on a book manuscript based on my dissertation, winner of the 2006 New England Council on Latin American Studies Dissertation Prize.  In it, I examine local struggles, shifting alliances and conflicts in the post-Peace Accords period, including contests over cultural identity, migration, and intermittent state engagement, and how these in turn shape community interaction with national peace processes and neoliberal globalization and governance.

My interest in power, violence and peace processes has expanded to encompass national and international considerations through my work with the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF.) Working at the intersections of law, human rights and applied anthropological practice, Mercedes Doretti of EAAF and I have collaborated on a number of co-authored articles addressed to anthropological, legal and human rights audiences.

In 2007, I began PIMSA (Programa de Investigación de Migración y Salud)-funded research on Mexican and Central American migrants to the New York State Capital region with colleagues at Albany and Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico, DF.  This project examines economic strategies, new migratory flows and local access to healthcare among migrants in three employment sectors (restaurants, farms and the Saratoga track.)

At the graduate and undergraduate level, I teach courses at UAlbany that cover a range of topics, including:
Power & politics,
Violence & war
Human rights
Latin America
Mesoamerica
Globalization
Ethnological theory
Migration
Economic anthropology

Select Publications

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

2008

Forensic Anthropology and Humanitarianism in Peace Keeping Operations.  In Law enforcement in peace support operations, R. Arnold (Ed.), The Hague: Brill, 2007 (With Mercedes Doretti).

2007

Grey Spaces and Endless Negotiations:  Forensic Anthropology and Human Rights in Anthropology Put to Work, Richard Fox and Les Field, eds,” Berg Publishers, pp. 45-64. (with Mercedes Doretti)

Lynching and Post-War Complexities in Guatemala, in Global Vigilantism, David Pratten and Atreyee Sen, eds.  Columbia University Press USA/Hurst & Co, UK, pp. 362-389 (with Gavin Weston.)

2005
Migration and the Transnationalization of Fiesta Customs in Todos Santos Cuchumatán
Latin American Perspectives, Volume 32, No. 5, September, pp. 12-32.

2003 and earlier

Forthcoming.  Life and Death as a Rural Marero, in Harvest of Violence Revisted, Walter Little and Timothy J. Smith, eds. Louisiana State University Press

With the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), Representative selection:
Update:  The Right to Truth.  In the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team Annual Report, 2003.  New York & Buenos Aires.

The Right To Truth. In the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team Annual Report, 2002. New York & Buenos Aires. Ppgs. 130-5

New Developments in the Prosecution of Human Rights Violations. In the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team Annual Report 2001. New York & Buenos Aires. Ppgs. 18-23

Human Rights Prosecutions in Europe and Argentina. In The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team Annual Report 2000. New York & Buenos Aires. Ppgs. 19-29

Update: The Aftermath of Lynching in Todos Santos, In Report on Guatemala, Winter 2000/2001, 21(4):12-14

Forthcoming