Ulla D. Berg

Ulla D. Berg is an Associate Professor at Rutgers University, affiliated with both the Latino and Caribbean Studies and Anthropology departments within the School of Arts and Sciences (SAS). Her research focuses on migration, transnationalism, regimes of (im)mobility, immigrant detention and deportation, media and performance, race and affect, visual anthropology, and ethnographic filmmaking in Latin America (particularly the Andes) and among U.S. Latinx communities.

• Education: Ph.D. in Socio-cultural Anthropology (2007) and Certificate in Culture and Media (2005) from New York University; M.A. (2001) and B.A. (1998) in Anthropology from University of Copenhagen.

Her scholarly work, including the book Mobile Selves: Race, Migration, and Belonging in Peru and the U.S. (2015), examines how migrants navigate legal categories through communicative practices, and how biometric technologies reshape racialized surveillance. She also explores the emotional costs of transnational family separation and media ideologies around communication technologies.

Recent publications analyze deportation regimes under Obama and Trump, carceral ethnography during pandemics, and visual anthropology in diasporic contexts. Berg is an active filmmaker, directing Waiting for Miracles (2003) and collaborating on projects like a documentary on Dominican infrastructure legacies.

She previously directed the Center for Latin American Studies (2018-2021) and collaborates with organizations like First Friends of NJ and NY. Her teaching includes graduate seminars on anthropological theory and undergraduate courses on Latinx studies and media anthropology.