Laurie Medina

Laurie Medina (PhD, UCLA) is Director of MSU’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Michigan State University. A sociocultural anthropologist, her work engages the fields of political and legal anthropology and environmental anthropology. Her most recent book (Governing Maya Communities and Lands in Belize: Indigenous Right, Markets, and Sovereignties, Rutgers, 2024) focuses on Mopan and Q’eqchi’ Maya communities’ decades-long struggle for Indigenous rights to lands in Belize, contextualized in relation to Indigenous advocacy to produce Indigenous rights at global and regional scales.