Brigittine French received $25,000 Wenner-Gren Research Grant

Brigittine French, professor of anthropology and Assistant Vice President of Global Education, recently received a $25,000 research grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation to continue her anthropological analysis of the Maya genocide in Guatemala with Indigenous collaborators from survivor communities.

In this project, titled “Maya Survivor Testimony and Memory in Post-War Guatemala,” French will map the linguistic and cultural features of genocide survivor testimonies from the Maya-Kaqchikel people, an Indigenous community in the Guatemalan highlands. These testimonies act as powerful forms of social and political action for survivors and eyewitnesses. They challenge the dominant national and international histories of denial and silence while calling into question long histories of colonization, war, and enduring violence that Indigenous communities have lived since the Spanish invasion.

This project builds upon French’s first book, Maya Ethnolinguistic Identity, and her 25 years of work in Guatemala. An earlier stage of the research was generously supported by an NEH grant  This Wenner-Gren grant will serve as the foundation of a book manuscript and allow French to present her findings over several weeks in the Guatemalan highlands with her collaborators with the intentional commitment to return knowledge about the Maya-Kaqchikel people to their communities.

“Earning a Wenner-Gren Foundation Grant is a major milestone in an anthropological life. I am so honored to continue the shared work of listening to and learning from Indigenous survivors’ collective memories of state violence,” says French.