Sarah Taylor, President
California State University, Dominguez Hills
Sarah Taylor is Associate Professor and Chair at the Department of Anthropology at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Her ongoing research foci include the relationship between social position and land use decisions made at the household level, participatory research design, and the shifting economic strategies employed by residents as they negotiate the arrival of tourism in their daily lives. More recently, her interests have shifted to include the role that traditional ecological knowledge plays in community-based tourism development and to explore the potentials for participatory research design and visual documentation in data collection.
<sartaylor(at)csudh.edu> | See Webpage
Julio Villa-Palomino, Treasurer
University of Michigan
I am a Peruvian-born sociocultural medical anthropologist whose research and teaching interests are situated at the intersections of psychological anthropology, Latin American Studies, and surveillance studies. My current research project ethnographically examines Peru’s transition to the Community Mental Health model.
<juliovp(at)umich.edu>
Jennifer Ashley, Biennial Conference Councillor
George Mason University
Jennifer Ashley is a political and media anthropologist in the Global Affairs Program at George Mason University. Her research has focused on the role of community and national media in democratization processes in Chile, as well as the country’s process to write a new constitution. She is also interested in the potential of digital humanities to present research to broader publics.
<jashley4(at)gmu.edu>
Melanie Ford Lemus, Secretary
Rice University
Melanie Ford Lemus is a PhD Candidate at Rice University. Her dissertation research examines the competing politics of governance for ravines in Guatemala City as they are framed by urban conservation initiatives, land tenure, architectural and planning discourse, the privatization of public space, and urban poverty. Her research aims to strengthen insight into how Guatemala City attempts to reckon and ameliorate social and environmental issues that result from the regional instability, marginality, and violence of the 20th century.
<melanie.ford(at)rice.edu>
Carwil Bjork-James, Program Councillor
Vander