Meet the Team
Dr Laura Bunt-MacRury
Principal Investigator
Dr Laura Bunt-MacRury is a historical and political anthropologist whose research focuses on indigeneity, law, development, environmental governance, and sustainable livelihoods in Latin America, particularly Peru and Bolivia. Her work explores the intersections of culture, markets, intellectual property, resource governance, and social justice, with a particular focus on Indigenous women's weaving communities, collective branding, cultural heritage, and community-led economic development.
She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the New School for Social Research in New York. She is a Fulbright Scholar and her research has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.
Laura is the author of numerous publications on law, indigeneity, and Latin America. Her forthcoming monograph, Lawful Intimacies: Embodying Violence & the Creation of Indigeneity in Twentieth-Century Peru (De Gruyter, Berlin) is scheduled for publication in 2027.
Lic. Aracely Roldán Montesinos
Co-Investigator
Lic. Aracely Roldán Montesinos is an anthropologist with more than twenty years of experience working with Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Andes. She earned her Licenciatura en Antropología from the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco (UNSAAC), where she trained under the renowned Peruvian anthropologist Jorge Flores Ochoa. Her work has focused on ecological anthropology, Indigenous livelihoods, pastoralism, gender, and sustainable development in the Andean region.
Fluent in both Quechua and Spanish, Aracely has worked extensively with Indigenous communities, non-governmental organisations, public institutions, and development agencies across southern Peru. Her research and professional practice focus on the relationship between local ecological knowledge, community development, cultural heritage, natural resource management, and Indigenous participation in public life. Throughout her career, she has collaborated with communities, researchers, policymakers, and civil society organisations to support locally grounded approaches to environmental stewardship, cultural preservation, and sustainable livelihoods.
Aracely is currently President of the Centro de Servicios Agropecuarios (CESA) in Cusco, where she leads research, training, and community engagement initiatives across the Andean region. Her longstanding commitment to collaborative research and community-based development has made her a respected advocate for Indigenous knowledge, ecological sustainability, and the strengthening of local institutions in the Peruvian Andes.