Biography

Carla Guerrón Montero, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Material Culture Studies (CMCS). She holds joint appointments in Latin American and Iberian studies, Africana studies, and the Department of Women and Gender Studies.

Prof. Guerrón Montero is an applied cultural anthropologist specializing in the anthropology of tourism, food, the African diaspora, applied/engaged anthropology, and world anthropologies. She studies the complex and multiple meanings and representations of identities among marginalized populations in modern Latin American and Caribbean nation-states, specifically Brazil, Ecuador, Grenada, and Panama.

She has been a fellow at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (New York), a Senior Researcher and Lecturer at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, FLACSO (Quito, Ecuador), and a Visiting Researcher at the Museu Nacional of the Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro, UFRJ (Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). In 2025, Prof. Guerrón Montero was the Distinguished Harman Scholar in Applied Anthropology at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). Her research and studies have been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Fulbright Program, the Ford Foundation, the Inter-American Foundation, the Nippon Foundation (Japan), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Secretary for Higher Education, Science, and Technology (SENESCYT, Ecuador).

Areas of Expertise/Research Interest

Anthropology of food, Anthropology of tourism, Applied/engaged anthropology, World anthropologies, Gender, ethnicity, and identity, Latin America and the Caribbean/African Diaspora

Professional Affiliations

• American Anthropological Association (AAA): Chair and co-chair of several committees and societies; Executive Board Member and inaugural Outreach and Education Advisory Board member.
• Applied Anthropology Network (AAN) of European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA): Member of Organizing and Advisory Committee of the international symposium “Why the World Needs Anthropologists.”
• Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA): Sustaining Fellow, Board Member, Program Chair, and Treasurer.

Grants and Awards

• Fulbright Senior Specialist Program Awardee, Federal University of Paraná, Graduate Program in Anthropology and Archaeology—Curitiba, Brazil (canceled by Fulbright due to U.S. federal government mandate), 2025.
• Slovenian Research Agency (United States-Slovenia bilateral projects) with Dan Podjed. Three collaborative applied anthropology grants, 2016 and 2025.
• Fulbright Senior Specialist Program Awardee, University of Ljubljana and the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts Research Centre (ZRC SAZU/SRC SASA)—Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2016.
• Core Fulbright Scholar Award (comparative study of cultural heritage, tourism, and domestic law in quilombos) (Museu Nacional of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro [UFRJ]), 2014-2015.
• Prometeo Fellowship—Government of the Republic of Ecuador/ National Secretary for Higher Education, Science, and Technology (SENESCYT) (nutritional anthropological research on inter-generational learning about food and family nutrition in Imbabura, Ecuador), 2013-2014.

Publications

Guerrón Montero, Carla. 2024. “Dissonance and Disobedience in Brazilian Quilombo Heritages.” International Journal of Heritage Studies [http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2024.2419850]

Guerrón Montero, Carla. 2023a. Población Afroantillana y Turismo en Panamá: De Migrantes Temporales a Atractivos Permanentes. Quito: Editorial FLACSO.

Guerrón Montero, Carla. 2023b. “Panama’s Temporary Migrants in the Tourism Era.” In The Intersections of Tourism, Migration, and Exile, editors Natalia Bloch and Kathleen M. Adams. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 130-147 (Winner of the 2024 Edward M. Bruner Book Prize).

Podjed, Dan, Meta Gorup, Pavel Borecký, and Carla Guerrón Montero (eds.). 2021. Why the World Needs Anthropologists. New York and London: Routledge (Winner of the 2021 Excellence in Science Award (Slovenian Research Agency).

Guerrón Montero, Carla. 2020. From Temporary Migrants to Permanent Attractions: Tourism, Cultural Heritage, and Afro-Antillean Identities in Panama. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.