Research Bio

Juliana Ramírez Herrera specializes in the arts and archaeology of the Indigenous Americas, particularly those of the so-called small-scale societies from pre-Conquest and early colonial Panama, Colombia, the Caribbean, and Amazonia. Her work engages with the spatio-temporal dislocations that have brought Indigenous material culture into contact with Western art historical and archaeological discourses. She is particularly interested in historiography, collecting practices, museums, and the ethical challenges of researching and teaching primarily looted material. Her research examines narratives of displacement—both real and conceptual—that have uprooted Indigenous peoples, their objects, and practices from ancestral lands and ontologies. She also explores the possibilities of a restitutive art history—one that embraces multitemporal approaches to challenge the colonial legacies of modern Western linear paradigms of time, progress, and heritage.

Research Expertise and Interest

art and archaeology of the Indigenous Americas