Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo

Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo is a professor and senior researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS) in Mexico City. Since her undergraduate days, Hernández Castillo has combined her academic work with feminist activism and with projects in radio, video, and journalism. Her academic work has promoted indigenous and women’s rights in Latin America. Her research interest covers indigenous studies, legal and political anthropology, decolonial feminisms, and activist research. Hernández Castillo is the author of Multiple InJustices: Indigenous Women, Law, and Political Struggle in Latin America (University of Arizona Press, 2018) and the coeditor of Transcontinental Dialogues: Activist Alliances with Indigenous Peoples of Canada, Mexico, and Australia (University of Arizona Press, 2019), among other books.

Hernández Castillo’s book, “Digging for Hope in Mexico: A Feminist Ethnography in the Land of Mass Graves,” will offer an ethnographic account of family collectives searching for their disappeared loved ones throughout Mexico. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and activist research, it will examine how in a context of extreme violence and impunity, the women of these collectives have created emotional links that develop into political actions.

Hernández Castillo did her undergraduate studies in the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, in Mexico City, and earned her doctorate in anthropology from Stanford University. She has received the LASA/Oxfam America Martin Diskin Memorial Lectureship, the Simón Bolívar Chair in Latin American Studies from the University of Cambridge, and the Boaventura de Sousa Santos Chair in Social Studies from University of Coimbra.