Lourdes Arizpe

Lourdes Arizpe is professor of social anthropology at the National University of Mexico, received an M.A. at the National School of History and Anthropology and a PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. She has pioneered anthropological studies on migration, rural development, gender, global change, deforestation and policy-oriented research on international development and cultural policy. She taught at Rutgers University as a Fulbright and received a John F. Guggenheim scholarship to study culture and gender in India and Bangladesh. She was director of the National Museum of Popular Cultures in Mexico. She was elected President of the National Association of Ethnologists of Mexico and Secretary to the Mexican Science Academy in 1992. Professor Arizpe was Director of the Institute of Anthropological Studies at the National University of Mexico, was elected President of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in 1988, and successfully organized its World Congress in Mexico in 1993. Lourdes Arizpe became a member of the United Nations Commission on Culture and Development, and soon afterwards was designated Assistant Director-General for Culture at UNESCO. She was elected President of the International Social Science Council and participated as a member of the Academic Faculty of the Global Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. The American Anthropological Association created the “Lourdes Arizpe Award in Ecology and Policy. At the United Nations Institute for Research on Social Development, in Geneva, Switzerland, she was Chair of the Board and a member of the Committee for Development Policy of the U.N. Economic and Social Council. Lourdes Arizpe became an Honorary Member of the Royal Anthropological Institute of the UK, and has received the Order of “Palmes Académiques” from France, the Award for Academic Merit of the Universidad Veracruzana in Mexico, and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Florida at Gainesville.