Ivan Sandoval-Cervantes
Associate Professor, Graduate Coordinator
Biography
I am a cultural anthropologist from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. I am an UDLAP alum, and I obtained my PhD from the University of Oregon in 2016. I am currently an Assistant Professor, and Graduate Coordinator of Anthropology at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). In the Spring 2022 semester, I will be a Visiting Research Fellow at the Animal Law and Policy Program at Harvard Law School where I will be working on my project “Dead Letter”: Animal Law, Activism, and Mexican Politics," which is part of my new research on the animal rights movement in urban Mexico.
My research interests can be divided into two overlapping sub-fields. The first sub-field includes the anthropology of migration, particularly the analysis of internal and transnational migrations, gender (masculinity and femininity), indigeneity, kinship, and care. The second sub-field includes multi-species ethnography, legal anthropology and the anthropology of social movements, particularly through the study of activism and animal rights in the Mexico-U.S. borderlands.
My manuscript, tentatively titled "Oaxaca in Motion: An Ethnography of Internal, Transnational, and Return Migration" is under contract with the University of Texas Press. "Oaxaca in Motion" is based on my dissertation that focuses on how masculinity and femininity shape, and are shaped by, internal and transnational migrations.
I am also working on a new project that examines the emergent animal rights movement in urban Mexico in the midst of continuous violence and ongoing challenges to the Mexican legal system–I am currently conducting research in Ciudad Juárez, México. This research has been generously funded by UCLA Law and the Culture and Animals Foundation.
Education
- B.A. Anthropology, Universidad de las Americas-Puebla (UDLAP), 2005
- M.Sc. Philosophy of Social Science, London School of Economics, 2007
- Ph.D. Anthropology. University of Oregon, 2016
Research Interests
Cultural anthropology, Migration, Gender (Femininity/Masculinity), Indigeneity, Globalization, Kinship, Care, Human-Animal Relations, Latinxs in the United States, Social Movements; Latin America, Mexico-U.S. Borderlands, Oaxaca, Mexico.