Former CASBS fellow (1993-94) Carlos Velez-Ibanez has been named a Corresponding Member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences (Academia Mexicana de Ciencias, or AMC). The AMC, founded in 1959, is part of the InterAmerican Network of Academies of Sciences which includes, among others, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. The Corresponding Member title recognizes the work and career of researchers outside Mexico who have contributed significantly to the development of science in Mexico. Only about one-hundred researchers outside Mexico are AMC Corresponding Members – ten of them are Nobel laureates.
Velez-Ibanez is the first American anthropologist to receive this honor. The AMC cited his work in the investigation of migration, political ecology, and human adaptation processes.
Velez-Ibanez is Regents Professor, Presidential Motorola Professor of Neighborhood Revitalization, and Founding Director, School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University. His areas of expertise include applied anthropology, complex social organizations, culture and education, ethno-class relations in complex social systems, migration and adaptation of human populations, political ecology, qualitative methodology and urban anthropology.
Before joining ASU in 2005, Velez-Ibanez served as Dean of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of California, Riverside (1994-1999) and professor of anthropology in the department of anthropology, University of California, Riverside (1994-2005). Previously he served as professor of anthropology, department of anthropology, University of Arizona (1984-1994) and Director of the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, department of anthropology, University of Arizona (1982-1994) Prior to this appointment, he was a tenured associate professor at University of California, Los Angeles. He completed a PhD in anthropology at the University of California, San Diego.
He was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1999. Among his many honors are the 2004 Robert B. Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology, awarded by the American Anthropology Association, and the Bronislaw Malinowski Medal presented by the Society for Applied Anthropology in 2003.
Velez-Ibanez will deliver an address at the AMC’s formal admission ceremony in spring 2016.
