Longtime anthropologist retires from MIT
December 10th, 2014
Jean Jackson, one of the earliest members of MIT’s Anthropology program and a founding member of the Women’s and Gender Studies program (formerly Women’s Studies), will retire this spring after 42 years as a faculty member. Jackson has done fieldwork in Mexico, Guatemala, and, for more than 45 years, Colombia. She’s written about kinship and marriage, anthropological linguistics, missionaries, and Colombia’s indigenous rights movement, among other topics. She’s now working on a book about the last two decades of her fieldwork, chronicling changes in indigenous activism in Colombia.
Over the years, Jackson has helped build a tight-knit community with her Anthropology colleagues. "She thinks ethically and acts ethically at every scale, from the global geopolitical to the very interpersonal politics of the department. She communicates through action that we’re all in it together,” Anthropology program head Stefan Helmreich told the MIT News. One of Jackson’s points of pride: "Everyone we have hired has received tenure.”
Explore Professor Jackson's research