Photo: Susy Chávez Herrera, 2021.
Dr. Maurice R. Magaña is an urban anthropologist and ethnic studies scholar who studies social movements and migration. His work focuses on understanding how everyday people collectively envision and enact more just, liberatory horizons. He has worked extensively with activists and artists in the United States and Mexico and collaborated with applied research teams working with the labor movement in Honduras, South Africa, and Costa Rica.
Dr. Magaña is an Associate Professor of Chicana/o/x Studies at the University of California, Davis (starting July 1, 2024). His first book, Cartographies of Youth Resistance: Hip-Hop, Punk, and Urban Autonomy in Mexico, UC Press, won the Anthony Leeds Prize by the Critical Urban Anthropology Association in 2021.
Before joining the faculty at the University of California, Davis, Maurice held academic appointments at the University of Arizona, the University of California, Los Angeles, and was a Fellow at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego.
Dr. Magaña’s research has been funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Ford Foundation and the Tokyo Foundation. His work has been published in scholarly journals like American Anthropologist, Ethnic & Racial Studies, Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, American Studies, Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Anthropology, Social Justice, City & Society, and Political & Legal Anthropology Review, among others. His work has also appeared in the edited volumes, Critical Handbook on Indigenous Development, Comunidades Virtuales, Handbook of Youth Activism, and Rethinking Latin American Social Movements: Radical Action from Below.
Maurice R. Magaña has served on the board of the Association of Latina/o and Latinx Anthropologists, the American Anthropological Association’s Working Group on Racialized Police Brutality and Extrajudicial Violence, the board of the Society for the Anthropology of North America and the editorial board of the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology. Dr. Magaña received his Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Oregon in 2013.
Maurice R. Magaña, PhD 