Sarah Abel

Dr. Sarah Abel is a Research Fellow at the Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology and Ethnology from EHESS Paris, an MPhil from Cambridge, and a BA in Modern and Medieval Languages (Spanish and French) from Cambridge. Her research focuses on race, genetics, and antiracism in American societies, particularly exploring how visual representations of race and genomic technologies shape identity narratives in Mexico and Brazil.

Her current project examines visual regimes of skin color in Mexico and their role in challenging post-racial national discourses. She has conducted fieldwork in the US, Brazil, Iceland, Cuba, and Mexico, and is affiliated with interdisciplinary networks like EUROTAST and CitiGen. Her work critiques scientific and public discourses around DNA's role in addressing racism, highlighted in her monograph Permanent Markers: Race, Ancestry, and the Body after the Genome (2022).

• Key Awards: British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Programme
• Research Interests: Mestizo societies, genomic technologies, transatlantic slavery legacies, antiracist visual practices
• Affiliations: Consortium for the Global South, Cambridge Global Challenges

Dr. Abel's interdisciplinary work bridges anthropology, genetics, and history to address how racialized bodies are constructed through biocultural processes and how antiracist movements subvert these frameworks. She welcomes MPhil students exploring race, ethnicity, and scientific knowledge in the Americas.