Chair and Professor

bio

Dr. Vélez-Ibáñez serves as professor and chair of the department of transborder chicana/o and latina/o studies and professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. He received his doctorate from the University of California, San Diego. His academic fields include applied anthropology, complex social organizations, culture and education, ethno-class relations in complex social systems, migration and adaptation of human populations, political ecology, qualitative methodology and urban anthropology.

Dr. Vélez-Ibáñez is a former fellow of the Center for Advanced Study at Stanford. He was raised in Tucson, Arizona, and received his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Arizona.

He was selected as the recipient of the Bronislaw Malinowski Award for 2003 and held the Presidential Chair in Anthropology and is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside.

Throughout his distinguished career, he has contributed significantly to applied anthropology and particularly, to an understanding of the contemporary lives of Mexican and Mexican-American populations. Through widely respected books and many articles, he has creatively explored themes and problems central to the life of these populations: the education of children, the emergence of socially viable communities, the role of women in politics, the development of cultural identity, the political economy of border life and the social basis of economic survival in scarce circumstances, to name a few.