Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Jessaca Leinaweaver is Professor of Anthropology and served as Chair of the Department of Anthropology from 2020 to 2023 and as Director of the Center of Latin American and Caribbean Studies from 2016 to 2019. She is the author of The Circulation of Children: Adoption, Kinship, and Morality in Andean Peru (Duke University Press, 2008), which won the Margaret Mead Award. Her second book is Adoptive Migration: Raising Latinos in Spain (Duke University Press, 2013). Her research has been supported by the Fulbright IIE, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, among others. Her op-eds on migration, adoption, and child welfare have been published in multiple venues, including U.S. News & World Report and the CBC.