Laura Leon Llerena

Associate Professor, School of Modern Languages and Cultures

Laura Leon Llerena is an Associate Professor whose research focuses on the circulation of knowledge produced by and about Indigenous peoples from the 16th to the 18th centuries, particularly from the Andean region. She has published on translation and colonization of Indigenous languages, the coexistence of Indigenous and European media, and on the intertwining of material culture and notions of the sacred in social and cultural interactions. Her book Reading the Illegible. Indigenous Writing and the Limits of Colonial Hegemony in the Andes (2023) was published by University of Arizona Press. The NMAI’s extensive collection of archaeological objects, and specifically of Peruvian textiles would be of much interest to her research on materiality and the sacred. The North American ethnology collection is also of interest for her comparative research on legibility.

Read more about Laura and her work here.