Amelia Frank-Vitale

Amelia Frank-Vitale is a Term Assistant Professor in the Human Rights Program at Barnard College, Columbia University. An anthropologist of migration and violence in Central America and Mexico, Dr. Frank-Vitale has documented the dangers facing people migrating across Mexico and the strategies they develop – including coming together in caravans – to manage those risks and defy restrictions on movement. Her current book project examines how Honduran youth navigate life after deportation in Honduras, illuminating the changing nature of deportation as a consequence of the externalization of borders and connecting regimes of mobility control - and the creative ways people challenge them - across scale and space.

Her work has been published in Geopolitics, the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, EntreDiversidades, Public Anthropologist, and Trends in Organized Crime. Her commentary has also appeared in The Washington Post, Fortune Magazine, NACLA Report on the Americas, In These Times, Contra Corriente, and The World Policy Journal.  Dr. Frank-Vitale also co-founded and co-edits the Expert Paper Series for Columbia's Center for Mexico and Central America (CeMeCa), which seeks to make detailed knowledge from Central America openly accessible to journalists, policy makers, attorneys, and others interested in the region.