Jennah Thompson-Vasquez '19

Jennah Thompson-Vasquez is an alumna of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences where she double majored in Anthropology and Latinx Studies. Her present interests include post-conflict societies, birth work as activism, oral histories, and the intersections of biomedicine and traditional medicines. She became attracted to these topics due to her participation in the 2019 MMUF January Programme in Cape Town and her time spent in the Bolivian Amazon where she worked with Indigenous communities surrounding issues of health and lifestyle change. Through Mellon Mays, Jennah has completed her honors thesis looking at the links between identity-based experiences, market economies, and healthcare-seeking practices of different Tsimané communities in Bolivia. She has presented her research at both the 2017 and 2018 Human Biology Association and American Association of Physical Anthropologists Annual Meetings and has been the recipient of the Academic Year Undergraduate Research Grant, Summer Undergraduate Research Grant, Undergraduate Research Assistant Program award, and LeCron Foster & Friends of Anthropology Research Grant. She has also been involved with Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) at Northwestern where she has helped facilitate workshops on college access and worked with high school students organizing a Latinx Summit for their peers. Jennah is currently the Outreach Coordinator at the Northwestern Office of Undergraduate Research, where she will be continuing her work on supporting FGLI-URM students and their needs at the institution. She is currently applying to doctoral programs in Anthropology.