Susan Ellison

Susan Helen Ellison (Ph.D. Brown University) is associate professor of anthropology at Wellesley College. At Wellesley, she is a faculty affiliate of Latin American Studies, Peace and Justice Studies, and Environmental Studies, and she serves on the board of the Suzy Newhouse Center for the Humanities. Ellison’s research links debates about democracy, foreign aid, justice, and trust to lived experiences of violence and financial insecurity among urban dwelling Indigenous Bolivians. Her first book, Domesticating Democracy: The Politics of Conflict Resolution in Bolivia (Duke University Press, 2018) received both the Bryce Wood Book Award from the Latin American Studies Association and the Association of Political and Legal Anthropology (APLA) book prize. Her recent articles include, “Painted by Default: Public Shaming and Graffiti on the Homefront” (American Anthropologist, 2019), “Of Cebras and Citizens: Kinesthetic Politics in Bolivia’s Transport Cities” (City and Society, 2023), and, “We Move Up Levels Together: Dignity, Transformative Marketing, and the Repurposing of Racial Capitalism” (Anthropologica, 2024). Her second book project, tentatively titled Betrayed: Politics, Pyramid Schemes, and Bolivian Vernaculars of Fraud, examines the political, legal, and moral valences of fraud in the conjoined cities of El Alto and La Paz, Bolivia.