Deborah Poole, professor emerita of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, passed away on January 3. She was 73 years old.
Dr. Poole earned her bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Michigan and her Ph.D. in the same discipline from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In 1988, she joined the anthropology faculty at The New School in New York City, where she taught for the next 14 years. Early into her scholarly career, she had a stint as a visiting professor in the doctoral program for anthropology and history at the Universidad de San Marcos in Lima, Peru. Later in life, she served as the Alberto Flores Galin Chair at the Facultad Ciencias Sociales, Pontificia Universidad Catolica, also in Lima.
In 2002, Dr. Poole began her long tenure at Johns Hopkins. From 2005 to 2009, she was director of the program in Latin American studies, and from 2015 to 2017, she was chair of the department of anthropology. She was granted emerita status in 2021.
Throughout her career, Dr. Poole conducted extensive field research in Peru and Mexico, providing insights into how racial ideology, violence, and law shape life, politics, and government in modern Latin America. In addition to numerous scholarly articles, Dr. Poole was the author of five books, including her most recent monograph, A Companion to Latin American Anthropology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008).