Patricia Zavella, UC Santa Cruz professor of Latin American and Latino studies, has been named winner of the 2016 Distinguished Career Award from the Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists, a section of the American Anthropological Association.
The award is scheduled to be presented when the American Anthropological Association holds its annual meeting in Minneapolis in November.
Zavella was previously announced as winner of the AAA's Committee on Gender Equity in Anthropology Award to be presented at the same meeting.
“Your scholarship and service to the field of anthropology and to Latino anthropology are extraordinary,” said Ana Aparicio, the ALLA president, in a letter to Zavella.
The Association of Latino and Latina Anthropologists was founded in 1990.
Zavella joined UC Santa Cruz in 1984 and served as chair of the Latin America and Latino studies department from 2007-2011 and again from 2014 until June 30, 2016. She also previously served as director of the Chicano/Latino Research Center.
She was a co-winner of the 2010 Prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Critical Study of North America given by the Society for the Anthropology of North America. In 2008, her UCSC colleagues chose her to deliver the Faculty Research Lecture.
She received her undergraduate degree from Pitzer College, and her masters and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. She had a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford's Center for Chicano Research before joining the UCSC faculty.
