Mary Leighton

I am a socio-cultural anthropologist with a STS focus and regional expertise in the US, Bolivia, and Chile. My work addresses collaborative misalignments between scientists from the Global North and Global South. I argue that scientists in the same discipline but different parts of the world have different national epistemic cultures that, more than differences in language or economic resources, lead to practical misunderstandings and epistemic inequalities. My first project in this area focused on collaborations between Chilean, Bolivian, Canadian, and US-based archaeologists working in the Tarapacá desert and Bolivian Andes. I am currently developing a new historical and ethnographci project on the experiences of refugee academics and the impact they have on the foreign scientific communities they join. At Michigan I work with Liz Roberts on the Mexican Exposures project where I am theorizing interdisciplinary and transnational collaborations between public health officials, ethnographers, and engineers.