María Elena García

María Elena García is a Professor in the Comparative History of Ideas Program and the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. She holds an Adjunct Professor position in the Department of Geography. García earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Brown University and has held Mellon Fellowships at Wesleyan and Tufts Universities. Her research focuses on Indigenous studies, animal studies, and Latin American political and cultural dynamics, particularly in Peru. Key projects include Making Indigenous Citizens (2005) and Gastropolitics and the Specter of Race (2021, awarded the Flora Tristán Prize). Current work examines political violence's impact on non-human life in the Peruvian Andes.

• Education: Ph.D., Anthropology, Brown University (2001)
• Affiliations: Jackson School of International Studies, Department of Geography

Research interests span indigeneity, interspecies politics, gastronomy's role in national identity, and post-conflict dynamics. Her recent Landscapes of Death project explores violence's ecological and cultural legacies. García has published in journals like Anthropology Now, Latin American Perspectives, and Environmental Humanities.

Her work critically interrogates race, species, and capital in Peru’s socio-political landscape, bridging ethnography with critical theory.