Shannon Speed

Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of Native American and Indigenous Studies, University of California-Los Angeles
Event Speakers

Shannon Speed is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. She holds a PhD in Anthropology and Native American Studies from the University of California, Davis. She is currently an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS), and has recently served as Assistant Vice President for Community Engagement (2009-2011) at the University of Texas at Austin. She has worked for the last two decades in Mexico, and her research and teaching interests include indigenous politics, legal anthropology, human rights, neoliberalism, gender, indigenous migration, and activist research. She has published five books and edited volumes, including Rights in Rebellion: Human Rights and Indigenous Struggle in Chiapas, Human Rights in the Maya Region: Global Politics, Moral Engagements, and Cultural Contentions, and Dissident Women: Gender and Cultural Politics in Chiapas. She has published numerous journal articles and book chapters in English and Spanish, as well as two books in Spanish. Her current research is on indigenous Latin American women migrants and gender violence, and she has a book in progress entitled States of Violence: Indigenous Women Migrants and Human Rights in the Era of Neoliberal Multicriminalism. She is Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of the tribally-sponsored Chickasaw Community Council of Central Texas (CCCCTX), and has served on its Board since 2007. In 2013, she was awarded the Chickasaw Dynamic Woman of the Year Award by the Chickasaw Nation, and in 2014 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award by the State Bar of Texas Indian Law Section.