Dr. Leinaweaver recently had an article she co-authored published in the Anthropologist Journal. Leinaweaver's article "Solidarity exclusions: Problematizing kinship and humanitarianism from the perspective of transnational adoption" investigate how solidarity is viewed in Spanish familial life in contrast to how it is viewed by adoption professionals who actively discourage it as a motivation for international adoption. Dr. Leinaweaver and her co-author Diana Marre use this contradiction to examine the concept of solidarity, which has been important in theories of kinship within anthropology, theories she learned during her time at Michigan. The article concludes that solidaridad’s exclusions from international adoption show that kinship and humanitarianism both involve work of identifying, accommodating, and resolving social difference.

Jessica received her masters and PhD from the University of Michigan and now studies anthropological demography; children, fostering, and families in urban Andean Peru; and transnational adoption and migration from Peru to Spain.