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Dr. J.A. (Julieta) Chaparro Buitrago

Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
Programme group: Anthropology of Health, Care and the Body
Area of expertise: Reproductive justice, Decolonial Feminisms, Reproductive Violence, Feminist Ethnography, Dissonance, Kinship Studies, Genetic banking, Reparations
Visiting address
  • Nieuwe Achtergracht 166
Postal address
  • Postbus 15509
    1001 NA Amsterdam
Contact details
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  • Profile

    I am a Latin American anthropologist and a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. My work examines how coloniality, colonial histories and structures, continues to shape the lives of Indigenous peasant women in Latin America. I focus on issues such as reproductive violence, chemical exposure in extractive zones, and the use of genetic material in state-led reparation programs.

    A central thread in my research is the ethics and practice of feminist and decolonial ethnography. I am particularly interested in the dilemmas feminist anthropologists face when producing critical scholarship while remaining accountable to the communities that participate in their research.

    I am the author of Decolonizing Reproductive Rights in Latin America, an ethnography of the aftermath of Peru’s 1990s sterilization campaign. The book analyzes how forced sterilization is interpreted by urban feminists, the state, and Indigenous peasant women, and the hierarchies and dissonances among these perspectives.

    My current project, The Afterlives of Kinship: Genetic-Based Reparations and Indigeneity, funded by an NWO Veni grant, explores how kinship and family structures intersect with genetic-based reparation efforts in Peru. Before joining the University of Amsterdam, I lectured in Reproductive Sociology at the University of Cambridge and held a Wellcome Trust Early Career Award. I earned my PhD in Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

  • Research

    Research methods

    Qualitative methods, feminist ethnography, body-mapping

    Current research projects

    1. The Afterlives of Kinship: Genetic-Based Reparations and Decolonial Kinship. This project explores how biogenetic kinship definitions influence Peru’s reparations, focusing on Indigenous views of genetic data, ancestry, and post-conflict justice.
    2. Reproductive Justice in Latin America: This is an hemispheric initiative to advance current knowledge on the intersections of reproductive justice and social justice in Latin America.

    Research grants & honours

    My work has been generously supported by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), The Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, Dutch Research Council (NWO), and Ford/LASA special projects.

    Current cooperations

    Current collaborations: Martina Yopo-Díaz (Universidad Católica-Chile), María Ximena Dávila (UT-Austin), Sandra Rodríguez (UCL)

    Cambridge Reproduction, University of Cambridge.

  • Publications

    2025

    • Chaparro Buitrago, J. A. (2025). Decolonizing Reproductive Rights in Latin America: The Cases of Forced Sterilization in Peru. (Decolonization and Social Worlds). Bristol University Press.
    • Chaparro Buitrago, J. A. (2025). Reproductive Extractivism: Mining and the Reproductive Grammar of Multispecies Destruction in Peru. In S. Franklin, & M. C. Inhorn (Eds.), The New Reproductive Order: Technology, Fertility, and Social Change around the Globe (pp. 293-308). NYU Press. https://nyupress.org/9781479832620/the-new-reproductive-order/

    2024

    • Chaparro Buitrago, J. A. (2024). Sterilizing Body-Territories: Understanding Contemporary Cases of Forced Sterilization in the United States and China. Feminist Anthropology, 5(2), 215-229. https://doi.org/10.1002/fea2.12135

    2023

    • Chaparro Buitrago, J. A., & Freeman, C. (2023). Reproductive Justice and the Figure of the Child: The Multiple Harms of Forced Sterilization and Abortion in Peru. Feminist Anthropology, 4(2), 171-177. https://doi.org/10.1002/fea2.12124
    • Dow, K., & Chaparro Buitrago, J. A. (2023). Toward Environmental Reproductive Justice. In C. C. Van Hollen, & N. Sheoran Appleton (Eds.), Companion to the Anthropology of Reproductive Medicine and Technology (pp. 266-281). Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119845379.ch15

    2022

    • Chaparro Buitrago, J. A. (2022). Debilitated Lifeworlds: Women’s Narratives of Forced Sterilization and the Limits of Reproductive Rights. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 36(3), 295-311. https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12700

    2019

    Prize / grant

    • Chaparro Buitrago, J. (2024). Veni.
    • Chaparro Buitrago, J. (2022). Early Career Award.
    • Chaparro Buitrago, J. (2021). Oriol Pi-Sunyer Dissertation Prize, Department of Anthropology.
    • Chaparro Buitrago, J. (2018). Armelagos-Swedlund Graduate Research Award, Department of Anthropology.
    • Chaparro Buitrago, J. (2016). Dissertation Fieldwork Grant.

    Talk / presentation

    • Chaparro Buitrago, J. (speaker) (19-3-2024). Reproductive Extractivism: Mining and the Reproductive Grammar of Multispecies Destruction in Peru, École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS).
    • Chaparro Buitrago, J. (speaker) (2024). Reproductive Grammars: Pathways to Documenting Reproductive Injustices, Reproductive Justice Now! An International Conference, Amsterdam.
    • Chaparro Buitrago, J. (speaker) (6-12-2022). Decolonizing Reproductive Rights and the Cases of Forced Sterilization in Peru, Graduate Institute Geneva.
    • Chaparro Buitrago, J. (speaker) (16-5-2022). Decolonizing Harm and the Cases of Forced Sterilization in Peru, University of Cambridge, UK.
    This list of publications is extracted from the UvA-Current Research Information System. Questions? Ask the library or the Pure staff of your faculty / institute. Log in to Pure to edit your publications. Log in to Personal Page Publication Selection tool to manage the visibility of your publications on this list.
  • Ancillary activities
    • Radboud University
      Grant and research advisor, faculty of management
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