Daniela Peluso: Member-at-Large April 2016-March 2022

Daniela Peluso

University of Kent

Member-at-Large of the SALSA Board April 1, 2016 – (reelected) March 31, 2022

Daniela Peluso is a social-cultural anthropologist who received her PhD from Columbia University in 2003. Dr Peluso’s research interests range from Amazonian to corporate environments and her teaching brings together divergent and similar aspects of the ‘exotic’ and ordinary, global and local for a contemporary understanding of and approach toward social anthropology.

Over the last three decades, Dr Peluso has worked in Lowland South America, mostly with Ese Eja communities in the Peruvian and Bolivian Amazon, and in close collaboration with indigenous organisations. She has been involved in various local efforts on issues relating to health, gender and land-rights. Daniela is an Associate of People and Plants International, an advisory board member of Chacruna, and currently manages the Lowland South Americanists listserv – LOSAN – that provides an interdisciplinary network for European colleagues working in Lowland South America and neighbouring regions.

Dr Peluso’s current research focuses on the geographical shifts of indigenous urbanisation whereby she views urbanisation as an indigenous process or strategy that may not reflect permanence but rather continuous movement between distinct environments. Daniela’s early work as a medical anthropologist focused on indigenous health-care delivery systems, medical pluralism and the geography of healthcare and well-being in Amazonia. Since medical choices are a reflection of identity, and it is mostly women who are responsible for the day-to-day healthcare of children in this region, Daniela’s interests led her to examine gender, the politics of reproduction and the construction of personhood.

Daniela Peluso’s institutional page: https://www.kent.ac.uk/anthropology-conservation/people/551/peluso-daniela