Carlos Velez-Ibanez

Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez received a Ph.D. in Anthropology, USCD (1975). Intellectual interests are broadly comparative and applied and publications include 13 books in English and Spanish with three more translated into Spanish as well many articles and chapters. He held professorships in anthropology at UCLA and the University of Arizona where in 1982, he founded the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology. He became dean in 1994 at the University of California, Riverside of the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences and founded the Ernest Galarza Applied Research Center, and in 2011 founded the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University.  Presently, he is Regents Professor of the School of Transborder Studies and School of Human Evolution and Social Change, and Motorola Presidential Professor of Neighborhood Revitalization, at Arizona State University. He has had numerous research and applied projects funded by private foundations and governmental agencies. His honors include the Bronislaw Malinowski Award, 1994 by the Society of Applied Anthropology; Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, 1993-94; and elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1999. In 2004, he was awarded The Robert B. Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology. American Anthropology Association.

 In 2016, he was inducted as a Corresponding Member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences; the first foreign anthropologist selected and joined 107 other members including 10 Noble Prize winners.  As well, he was elected as the NACCS Rocky Mountain Foco Scholar in 2016 and received the Saber es Poder Prize in 2018 from the Institute for Mexicans Abroad and the Mexican American Studies Department of the University of Arizona.  His book, Hegemonies of Language and their Discontents (Tucson: University of Arizona, 2017) was awarded Honorable Mention by the American Association of Latinas/os Anthropologists of the American Anthropology Association in November of 2018. In 2020, he was presented with the Franz Boas Award by the American Anthropology Association for his exemplary contributions to Anthropology and is the most prestigious award presented by the American Anthropology Association.     His newest work: Reflections of a Transborder Anthropologist from Netzahualcóyotl to Aztlán, published in 2020 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press) was selected for the Distinguished Author Award of the American Association of Hispanic Higher Education in 2021.  In 2021, he earned the Solon T. Kimball Award for Public and Applied Anthropology which” Honors exemplary anthropologists for outstanding recent achievements that have contributed to the development of anthropology as an applied science and have important impacts on public policy,” by the American Anthropological Association. Lastly, in the same year he was awarded the SANA Prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Critical Study of North America.  It recognizes scholars with a notable long-term program of research and publication by the Society for the Anthropology of North America, November 9, 2021.  In 2022, he was elected as Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2024, awarded the Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies Association. His next work:The Rise of Necro/Narco Citizenship: Belonging and Dying in the North American Region (Tucson: University of Arizona Press) will be published in the Spring of 2025.