Lorena  Ojeda Dávila
Lecturer, Research  |  2019-20

Mexico

Project Title: The Tarascan Project. Academic Collaboration and International Cooperation between Mexico and the USA during WWII and the Cold War

A native of Morelia, Michoacán, Ojeda Dávila primarily focuses her research, both historical and anthropological, on the P’urhépecha group from the northwestern region of the state and has published several books and articles about the indigenous peoples and their heritage and culture. As Mexico Studies Chair, Ojeda Dávila taught a course titled “Indigenous Social Movements in Mexico,” an interdisciplinary course that provides an overview of the emergence of the major social movements led and empowered by different Mexican indigenous groups throughout history.

Ojeda Dávila is currently tenured faculty at Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, one of the first universities established in the Americas and known for producing many revolutionary thinkers and its open acceptance of disadvantaged students from neighboring states and indigenous communities. There, she teaches methodology of history, anthropology of Michoacán, and introduction to anthropology and interdisciplinary methods at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She has been recognized as a National Researcher in Mexico (Sistema Nacional de Investigadores) since the year 2014.

Ojeda Dávila received her M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and a second M.A. and a Ph.D. from the Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Sevilla, Spain through the program “History of Latin America – Mundos Indígenas.” She was also a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of California Berkeley, where she completed her post-doctoral research.