Cecilia Vasquez
PhD 2021
Current Position: Assistant Professor, Anthropology, UC Riverside
Biography
Cecilia Vasquez holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research explores grassroots responses to sanctuary policies, detention, and community care in the Inland Empire. Her broader interests include citizenship and belonging, accompaniment, and abolition. As an activist-engaged scholar, she is committed to public scholarship. She has led community art projects, organized public conferences, choreographed dance pieces, and created educational events that address issues such as migration, detention, and accompaniment.
Her recent article, “Processing the Process: Practices of Evaluating Activist-Engaged Research and Collaboration,”published in Transforming Anthropology, uses embodied writing to reflect on failure, vulnerability, and accountability in a community art project addressing sanctuary practices in the Inland Empire. The article examines how activist-engaged ethnography can create more ethical and accountable research partnerships. She is currently developing her book manuscript tentatively titled, Sanctuary is a Verb: Grassroots Organizing, Anti-Detention Struggles, and Abolition in the Inland Empire.
She is the recipient of the American Council of Learned Societies Emerging Voices Postdoctoral Fellowship, the University of California Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the Junior Faculty Outstanding Scholarship and Engagement Award from the Association of Latina/o & Latinx Anthropologists.
In addition to her academic work, Vasquez is a dance practitioner with more than 25 years of training and has performed professionally with Grandeza Mexicana and Pacifico Dance Company.