Maria Jose Pelaez-Sierra

she/her/hers

Programs: Anthropology PhD

Contact:

Email: Maria Jose Pelaez-Sierra

Program: PhD Anthropology

Year Entered: Fall 2023

Advisor: Professor Joel C. Kuipers

Maria Jose is a Ph.D. candidate in linguistic anthropology. Her research examines how promises are made, kept, and renegotiated among families living with hereditary early-onset Alzheimers in Colombia and the United States.

Research Interests: Dementia; Aging; Family Obligations; Moral Philosophy and Ethics; Theory of Mind; Consciousness and Self; Medical Anthropology; Mix-Methods research.

Past Education

B.A. in Literary Studies (Graduated with Honors)—Pontificia Universidad
Javeriana, Colombia
B.A. in Journalism (Graduated with Honors)—Pontificia Universidad Javeriana,
Colombia
M.A. in Literary Studies with an Emphasis on Research—Universidad Nacional
de Colombia
Research Exchange Student (30 cum laude)—Università di Bologna, Italy

Publications

Journal Articles & Chapters

Greenwald, Martha, María José Peláez, and Sarah E. Wagner. "Locating Grief: Pandemic Memory, Mourning, and the Politics of Where." In The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Death, edited by Sarah L. Richardson, Sarah E. Wagner, and Ruth E. Toulson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026.
Peláez, María José. "La casa." Revista Argos 9, no. 23 (2022): 63–75. https://doi.org/10.32870/argos.v9.n23.6a22.
Peláez, María José. "Porque usted ya enterró a su muerto." Revista La Múcura 10 (2021): 54–67.

Scholarly Commentaries & Essays

Peláez, María José, Kai River Blevins, and Joel C. Kuipers. "There Are Ghosts in This Machine: AI Anonymization and the Identification of Self." Society for Linguistic Anthropology Blog. Forthcoming (July 2026).
Peláez, María José. "Life and Death in Latin American Cities: The Necropolis at Stake." European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 121 (2026). https://doi.org/10.32992/d2wzhr67.
Wagner, Sarah E., María José Peláez, Martha Greenwald, Paige Gavin, and Avery Nennmann. "Terminated Effective Immediately: Studying the Refusal to Study Pandemic Loss." Anthropology News, March 27, 2026. https://www.anthropologynews.org/articles/terminated-effective-immediately-studying-the-refusal-to-studypandemic-loss/.

Film Ethnography

Peláez, María José, dir. Huesos y flores [Bloom Bones]. Six Zero Media, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIfmyevSNb0.

Distinctions

Fellowships & Scholarships

Columbian Distinguished Fellowship, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences (CCAS), George Washington University, 2023–2028
COLFUTURO Graduate Loan-Scholarship, Ministry of Education of Colombia, 2023–2028
Research Assistantship, Rituals in the Making Research Group, National Science Foundation (NSF), 2024
International Mobility Grant, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2022

Research Grants

Discourse Lab Research Fund, Department of Anthropology, George Washington University, 2025
Lewis N. Cotlow Fund, Department of Anthropology, George Washington University, 2025
Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology (SIMA) Fellowship, Smithsonian Institution, 2024
Lewis N. Cotlow Fund, Department of Anthropology, George Washington University, 2024

Honors & Distinctions

Order of Academic Merit (Highest Undergraduate GPA), Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2022
Honorable Mention (Undergraduate Thesis Excellence), Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2022

Courses

Instructor & Course Creator, January 2023 – May 2023

Universidad de la Sabana, Colombia, Department of Journalism and Communication Studies

Periodismo narrativo (New Journalism), Spring 2023
Producción y realización de podcasts (Podcasts Production), Spring 2023

Graduate Teaching Assistant, September 2023 – May 2026

George Washington University, Department of Anthropology

TA ANTH 1002: Sociocultural Anthropology (Prof. Ilana Feldman), Spring 2026
GA ANTH 2506: Religion, Myth, and Magic (Prof. Susan Johnston), Fall 2025
TA ANTH 1004: Language in Culture and Society (Prof. Alexander Dent), Spring 2024
GA ANTH 3625: Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives on Data Ethics (Prof. Jamie Cohen-Cole), Fall 2023