# Amber M. Henry Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies Faculty Affiliate of the Afro-Latin American Research Institute (ALARI) ![Amber Henry](/sites/g/files/omnuum8896/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/aaas/files/amber_henry_-3.jpg?itok=25in3i8m) location\_on Barker Center, Room 235 12 Quincy St Cambridge, MA 02138 smartphone [(617) 384 0249 ]() email Amber M. Henry is an anthropologist of Latin America and the Caribbean whose work explores political mobilization and embodied practices in relation to sovereign forms of Black placemaking. Professor Henry’s first book centers on the Afro-Colombian village of San Basilio de Palenque, a maroon community (people who sought freedom by escaping slavery) in the Colombian Caribbean that became one of the first free Black villages in the Americas in 1713. The book traces the twin origin stories of Cartagena’s ascent to Colombia’s premier tourist destination and Palenquera womens’ rise as cultural icons within the context of post-conflict state making. Drawing from over fourteen years of ethnographic research, this project studies how maroons and their descendents mobilize instances of flight in the past toward creative versions of sovereignty, freedom, and belonging in the present. Her second book is an emergent project with Black midwives in Colombia’s Pacific Coast. Henry explores traditional midwifery impacts maternal health outcomes and belonging through its emphasis on intergenerational relationships and traditional ecological knowledge. Henry’s scholarship has been supported by numerous grants and fellowships. She is a two-time Fulbright grant recipient to Colombia (2010, 2018) and has won awards from the American Association of University Women ([AAUW](https://www.aauw.org/black-women-fellowships-grants-alumnae/)) the Center for Experimental Ethnography ([CEE](https://www.ceepenn.org/)), and the Mark Claster Mamolen Dissertation Workshop at Harvard’s Afro Latin American Research Institute ([ALARI](https://alari.fas.harvard.edu/mark-claster-mamolen-dissertation-workshop-class-of-2020/)). She is a long time member of the Association of the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora ([ASWAD](https://www.aswadiaspora.org/)) and the Association of Black Anthropologists ([ABA](https://aba.americananthro.org/)). Before joining the faculty at Harvard, Henry was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute of African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia and earned a PhD in Anthropology and Africana Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Her teaching and advising interests include racial ideologies, Black Feminism, political movements, tourism, qualitative research methods, and the African Diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean (particularly Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Barbados). Courses: - The Politics of Paradise: Tourism in Latin America and the Caribbean (Fall 2024, 2025) - The Place of Freedom: Marronage from Palenques to Quilombos (Spring 2026) - Black Feeling: race and the Politics of Emotion (TBD) - Storied Lives: Methods in Oral History (Spring 2025) - Thickening Description: Methods in Black & Indigenous Ethnography (Spring 2026) - ## People [Faculty](/people/faculty)