Circe Sturm

A practicing anthropologist, Dr. Sturm has spent her career trying to better understand how race shapes lived experiences of social belonging and political citizenship. Most of her research has been in collaboration with Native and African American communities. She is the author of two award winning books, Blood Politics (UC Press 2002) and Becoming Indian (SAR Press 2011), and editor of Blackness and Indigeneity in the Light of Settler Colonial Theory (AICRJ 2020). Her work has been profiled in the New York Times and on various local and syndicated NPR programs. She has lectured in a range of public and university venues, including for the US Forest Service, New York Public Library, and Indigenous Law and Policy Center. As a public intellectual with a deep commitment to ethics, social justice, and community engagement, her work has been read, debated, and cited by scholars, tribal citizens, journalists, lawyers, judges, and a broader reading public. She has taught about race and racism in the US for nearly 25 years, first at the University of Oklahoma and now at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is a Professor of Anthropology and faculty affiliate of the Native Americans and Indigenous Studies program.