Joshua Mayer

Assistant Professor, Anthropology and Social & Critical Inquiry

Anthropology

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Education

Ph.D., 2023, University of California, Los Angeles

About

Note: I am on fellowship Fall 2026/Spring 2027.

I am a political anthropologist interested in the relationships between settler colonialism, imperialism, and Black and Indigenous peoples’ territorial governance in Latin America. Since 2014, I have conducted community-collaborative research with the Rama and Kriol peoples of southeastern Nicaragua. I employ ethnographic methods to understand how people struggle against, formulate alternatives to, or perpetuate systems of exploitation, expropriation, and extraction in their everyday lives.

In my primary area of research, I seek to understand the varied social worlds that shape Black and
Indigenous peoples’ territoriality and dispossession. This long-term research is co-directed by Rama
and Kriol communities; the communities collaborate in the formulation of research questions, research design, the research process, and data analysis. As a faculty fellow at the UConn Humanities Institute, I am currently completing my first book, Territory as Freedom: Building a Black and Indigenous Future in Nicaragua. The book examines Rama-Kriol political thought, strategies, and daily practices as they engage in self-governance and territorial defense amid dispossession driven by export-oriented beef and gold production. I am also carrying out two new ethnographic projects. First, in Please Steal Responsibly, I am researching the roles of human rights and corporate social responsibility actors in the ongoing theft of Black and Indigenous peoples’ territories in Nicaragua. Second, in Afro-Indigenous Nicaragua in Exile, I am working with members of Black and Indigenous communities who are navigating life as refugees while trying to continue their activism from afar. My research has received funding from agencies including the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Fulbright Program.

As a fellow at the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, I am also developing a
line of research around the intersections of academic freedom, immigration policies, and collective
bargaining.

My areas of teaching interest include theories and ethnography of the African diaspora, Indigenous
studies, Latin American social movements, political ecology, critical development studies, racial
capitalism, community-collaborative research methods. I also enjoy teaching professional development for anthropology students.

In addition to more traditional scholarly work, I serve as a fellow at the Oakland Institute, where I
contribute to research and advocacy related to the dispossession of Black and Indigenous peoples in
Nicaragua. I also regularly serve as an expert witness in immigration proceedings in the U.S. and U.K. and have testified to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights regarding prior consultation of Indigenous and Afrodescendant peoples. My organizing centers on immigrant rights, labor, abolition, and Palestinian human rights, and I have previously served as an elected member-at-large of the UConn-AAUP Executive Committee.

I was raised in Portage, Michigan, on the ancestral lands of the Bodéwadmi, Odawa, and Ojibwe
peoples. I received a B.A. in political science from Amherst College, an M.A. in the social sciences from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

I also previously served as a visiting researcher at the Universidad Centroamericana in Managua,
Nicaragua.

Affiliations

Assistant Professor (joint appointment), UConn Department of Social and Critical Inquiry
Faculty Affiliate, UConn Africana Studies Institute
Fellow, AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom
Fellow, The Oakland Institute

Research Interests

African diasporic and Indigenous politics, community-collaborative methods, Central America, settler colonialism, territory, imperialism, extraction.

Teaching

Undergraduate:

• ANTH 1000. Peoples and Cultures of the World
• NAIS/ANTH/AFRA/LLAS 2346: Afro-Indigenous Freedom Struggles in Latin America
• ANTH/LLAS 3021. Contemporary Latin America
• AFRA/ANTH 3155. Anthropology of the African Diaspora
• ANTH 3562. Careers in Anthropology

Graduate:

• ANTH 5395/LLAS 5105: Racial Capitalism

Articles

Mayer, J. L. 2020. “Conceptualizing Settler Colonialism in Nicaragua.” Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development 49, no. 3–4: 195–245.

Betts, J. T., J. F. Mendoza Espinoza, A. J. Dans, C. A. Jordan, J. L. Mayer, and G. R. Urquhart. 2020. “Fishing with Pesticides Affects River Fisheries and Community Health in the Indio Maíz Biological Reserve, Nicaragua.” Sustainability 12, no. 23: 10152.

Selected Book Chapters

Mayer, J. L. 2027. “Targeting the Targeters: An Agenda for the Anthropology of Sanctions-Making.”
In Besieged by Sanctions: Everyday Encounters with Economic Warfare, edited by N. Bajoghli and A. Osanloo. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

Mayer, J. L. 2019. “Negotiating Consultation: The Duty to Consult and Contestation of Autonomy in
Nicaragua’s Rama-Kriol Territory.” In Indigenous Struggles for Autonomy: The Caribbean Coast of
Nicaragua, edited by L. Baracco, 99–130. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Reports

Mittal, A., E. Heilmann, J. L. Mayer, and A. Currier. 2024. “Symbolic Sanctions: US Targets Nicaraguan Gold but Leaves Worst Actors Untouched.” The Oakland Institute. October 17.

Mittal, A., and J. L. Mayer. 2024. “Nicaragua’s Gold Rush: Theft of Indigenous Lands Unhindered by US Sanctions.” The Oakland Institute. February 1.

Mayer, J. L. 2020. “One Degree Removed: MLR Forestal’s Ties to Indigenous and Afro-Descendant Rights Violations.” The Oakland Institute. October 29.

Mittal, A., J. L. Mayer, and K. O’Neill. 2020. “Is Nicaragua for Sale? Foreign Mining Companies Are Eager to Buy.” The Oakland Institute. October 29.

Public & Engaged Scholarship

Mayer, J. L., and A. Mittal. 2021. “Amid the Political Crisis in Nicaragua, Foreign Gold Mining Companies Amplify the Repression.” The Oakland Institute. July 13.

Mayer, J. L. 2018. “Behind the Fire that Propelled Nicaragua’s Uprising.” NACLA News. December 12.