Dr. Alisse Waterston, presidential scholar and professor emerita, was honored by the American Anthropological Association (AAA) with the prestigious Franz Boas Award for Exemplary Service, which recognizes members who have made exceptional contributions to anthropology with respect to the increase and dissemination of humanistic and scientific knowledge and/or service to the profession.
Waterston is a publicly engaged cultural anthropologist who studies the human consequences of structural and systemic violence and inequality. Her most recent cross-cultural work focuses on the processes and aftermaths of political violence, ethnic and religious conflict, displacement and transnationalism, remembering, diaspora, cultural trauma and identity formation. Waterston is recognized for “writing anthropology otherwise,” offering creative, innovative ways of communicating knowledge.
She is author of the award-winning My Father’s Wars: Migration, Memory and the Violence of a Century and the award-winning graphic book Light in Dark Times: The Human Search for Meaning (2024); serves as series editor of the Intimate Ethnography series of Berghahn Books; was founding editor of Open Anthropology; co-editor of Anthropology Off the Shelf: Anthropologists on Writing, with Maria D. Vesperi; and co-editor of Gender in Georgia: Feminist Perspectives on Culture, Nation and History in the South Caucasus, with Maia Barkaia. She is also the author of two earlier books including Love, Sorrow and Rage: Destitute Women in a Manhattan Residence, a story of women and homelessness that continues to be relevant.
Waterston’s most recent journal articles include “Improvising Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: Anthropological Perspectives” in the Swedish Journal of Anthropology (forthcoming), “Intimate Ethnography: What’s It Good For?” in American Anthropologist (forthcoming), "Living in and with a Regime of Silencing: Narrative Control and Totalitarian Tendencies since October 7, 2023" in Today's Totalitarianism (2024) and “Observations” and “Afterword: Reading and Writing in the Company of Anthropologists” in A Collection of Creative Anthropologies (2024).
Waterston is a fellow with the Program in Transnational Processes, Structural Violence and Inequality at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. She previously served as president of the American Anthropological Association and as an international scholar with the Open Society Institute at Tbilisi State University. She received an honorary doctorate from Ilia State University in the Republic of Georgia and earned a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center, an MA from Columbia University and a BA from New York University.
