Amanda Daniela Cortez, an Assistant Professor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is a Mexican-American cultural anthropologist and received her MA and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Notre Dame. Before joining the department, she held postdoctoral research positions at the University of Connecticut and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She also held a full-time faculty position at Clatsop Community College.
Dr. Cortez’s work sits at the intersection of anthropology, Indigenous studies, and animal studies. Broadly, her work is concerned with the effects and responses to ongoing colonial structures of power on humans and other beings and collaborative approaches to research. Methodologically, she aims to conduct anti-colonial anthropological research that is at once collaborative and beneficial for those with whom she works.