Ana Mariella Bacigalupo, Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology, Anthropology of Religion and Research Professor Environment and Sustainability at SUNY Buffalo, draws on decolonizing methodologies in her work with Indigenous Mapuche shamans and power in southern Chile and pan-Indigenous shamans and more-than-humans in northern Peru. Previously, she taught indigenous religions at the Divinity School at Harvard University and indigenous histories and religions in the History Department at Universidad Catolica de Chile. Born in Peru and of Indigenous Quechua descent, Prof. Bacigalupo holds a PhD and MA in Anthropology from University of California, Los Angeles and an MA in Ethnohistory from Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile.

Prof. Bacigalupo has gained an international reputation for her use of critical practice theory, phenomenology and theories of power, materiality, embodiment, performance and personhood in her analysis of religious practices and movements. She has also analyzed the complex relationship between religion, politics and justice as they shape epistemological and ontological questions and questions. Prof. Bacigalupo analyzes how dominant ideologies, norms, institutions and power dynamics shape our actions and ideas about the world in ways that perpetuate inequalities.  Prof. Bacigalupo has dedicated her life work to analyzing shamanism to challenge the dominant notions of what constitutes nature/culture, subject/object, material/spiritual, environment, gender and sexuality, the body, healing, history and personhood. She argues that since indigenous shamans mediate within and between worlds, species, genders and temporalities, they can productively question and transform power, produce decolonizing methodologies and theories and envision new futures—broad global concerns that affect us all. Her writing traces the many forms of social critique wielded by shamans— from gender bending, interspecies healing, emplaced memory politics, to performance based and graphic literacies, remaking history via multitemporality, subversive religious/political movements and the subversive cosmopolitics of mountains that transform current notions of politics, ethics and justice.

Prof. Bacigalupo’s books include The Subversive Politics of Mountains: Confronting Climate Change in Northern Peru (in process, single authored); Subversive Religion and More-Than-Human Materialities in Latin America (2024, co-edited), Thunder Shaman: Making History with Mapuche Spirits in Patagonia (2016, single authored); Shamans of the Foye Tree: Gender, Power and Healing Among Chilean Mapuche (2007, single authored); La Voz Del Kultrun en la Modernidad: “Tradición” y Cambio en la  Terapéutica De Siete Machi Mapuche [The Voice of the Mapuche Shaman’s Drum in Chilean Modernity: The Healing Practice of Seven Mapuche Shamans] (2001, single authored); Adaptación de los métodos de curación “tradicionales” Mapuche: La práctica de la machi contemporánea en Chile [Hybridity in Mapuche Healing Practice: The Practice of Contemporary Shamans in Chile] (1996, single authored); and Modernización o sabiduría en tierra Mapuche? [Modernization or Wisdom in Mapuche land?] (1995, co-authored). Prof. Bacigalupo has also published 74 academic articles (72 of them single authored). She also co-produced the documentary film Guardians of Water (2026) with Junior Prado.

Professor Bacigalupo has secured external research funding from numerous prestigious foundations including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the National Endowment for the Humanities (twice), the National Humanities Center (twice), the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation, the Stanford Humanities Center, the School for Advanced Research, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, the Fulbright Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the International Association of University Women, Centre for Advanced Studies: Futures of Sustainability in Hamburg, NICHE Centre for Environmental Humanities in Venice, Fundación Andes in Chile (twice), Fondecyt in Chile (twice) and the Harvard Divinity School (twice), among others. Prof. Bacigalupo also collaborated on a National Institute of Health, Health Disparities International Research Training Grant in Northern Peru. Additionally, she has received thirty University grants from UCLA, SUNY Buffalo and Universidad Catolica de Chile.

Prof. Bacigalupo has received honors and awards for academic excellence, among them the Roy Rappaport Distinguished Lecture in Anthropology of Religion, the McLester Distinguished Lecture in Religious Studies and the Benson Saler Distinguished Lecture in Anthropology of Religion. She was granted the Outstanding Young Investigator Award; the UB 2020 Award for Excellence in Cultural and Literary/Textual Studies; and the Academic Excellence Award from SUNY Buffalo as well as the Academic Excellence Award from Universidad Catolica de Chile. Her books received awards from the Association of American Publishers and the Consejo Nacional del Libro y la Lectura in Chile. For her excellent teaching, Prof. Bacigalupo was granted both the Milton Plesur Excellence in Teaching Award and the Meyerson Award for Distinguished Teaching and Mentoring.

Professor Bacigalupo serves on the Advisory Committee for the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology and on the Advisory Committee for Grides Disaster Risk Management Program in Peru. She served as chair of the section on Religion and Spirituality of the Latin American Studies Association, and Program Councilor for the Society for Latin American and the Caribbean Anthropology and the Society for Lowland South America. She served on the Boards of the Anthropology of Religion section at the American Anthropological Association and the Indigenous Religions section at the American Academy of Religion.

• PhD, University of California, Los Angeles
  
• MA, University of California, Los Angeles
  
• MA, Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago
  
• BA, Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago
  

Undergraduate Courses

• APY 106 | Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
• APY 324 | Approaches to the Study of Religion
• APY 394 | Shamans and Healers in Native South America
• APY 421 | The Anthropology of Death and Dying

Graduate Courses

• APY 508 | The Field Experience: Ethnographic Perspectives and Methods
• APY 591 | Nationalism, Transnationalism and Global Culture
• APY 565 | Gender and Healing in the Americas: Native and Creole Perspectives
• APY 575 | Living in the Anthropocene: Multispecies Relationships in Catastrophic Times
• APY 575 | Social Memory: Narrative, Mementoes, Embodiment, And Forgetting
• APY 515 | The Politics of Indigeneity
• APY 603 | Anthropology of the Body

Books

• 2016       Thunder Shaman: Making History with Mapuche Spirits in Chile and Patagonia. Austin: University of Texas Press.
• 2007       Shamans of the Foye Tree: Gender, Power, and Healing among the Chilean Mapuche. Austin: University of Texas Press. 321 pp.
  • Review: "Shamans of the Foye Tree"  
• 2001       La voz del kultrun en la modernidad: Tradición y cambio en la terapéutica de siete machi Mapuche [The voice of the drum in modernity: Tradition and change in the healing therapies of seven Mapuche shamans]. Santiago: Editorial Universidad Católica de Chile. 271 pp.
  • Review: "La Voz del Kultrun"  
• 1996       Adaptación de los métodos de curación “tradicionales” Mapuche: La práctica de la machi contemporánea en Chile [Hybridity in Mapuche “traditional” healing methods: The practice of contemporary Mapuche shamans]. Santiago: PAESMI. 66 pp.
• 1995       Modernización o sabiduría en tierra Mapuche? [Modernization or traditional wisdom in Mapuche land?]. Co-authored with Armando Marileo, Ricardo Salas, Ramón Curivil, Cristián Parker, and Alejandro Saavedra. Santiago: San Pablo. 198 pp.

• 2024 Subversive Religion and More-than-human Materialities in Latin America with Carlos Manrique and Carlota McAlister. American Religion 5(2). University of Indiana Press. https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/52533 (11 chapters)

Articles and Book Chapters (in English)

• 2025     “Climate Crises and Postapocalyptic Futures: Visionary Landscapes in Northern Peru.” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 20(1). https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.28814
• 2024     “Pan-indigenous Moral Cosmopolitics: Subversive Mountains and Climate Justice in Northern Coastal Peru.” American Religion 5(2):19-43. https://doi.org/10.2979/amr.00002
• 2024 (with Fabien Le Bonniec)     “Queering the Spirit of the Law: Mapuche Shamanic Justice in Judge Karen Atala’s LGBT child custody case against the Chilean state.” Journal of Anthropological Research 80(2): 143-176.  https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/729743
• 2024     “Cannibalistic Exchanges with Ancestor Mountains: Moral Economies of Gold Mining in Northern Peru.” Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 29 (4):1-10. https://doi.org/10.1111/jlca.12727
• 2024     “The Flesh of Justice in Latin America: Marxist Materiality, Subversive Cosmopolitics and Theopolitics” with Carlos Manrique and Carlota McAllister. American Religion 5(2)1-18.  
  https://doi.org/10.2979/amr.00001
• 2023     "The Mapuche Man Who Became a Woman Shaman: Selfhood, Gender Transgression, and Competing Cultural Norms" American Ethnologist Special Virtual Issue “Transitions: Fifty years of writing on gender, sexuality, and LGBTQ+ identities. November 7. https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1111/(ISSN)1548-1425.Transitions.
• 2022     “Subversive Cosmopolitics in the Anthropocene: On Sentient Landscapes and the Ethical Imperative in Northern Peru.” Pp. 176-205. In Climate Politics and the Power of Religion. Evan Berry (Ed). Indiana University Press.
• 2022     “Embodying, Reshaping, and Combining the Past and the Future: A Mapuche Shaman’s Historical Agency in Chile.” In Spirit-based Traditions of the Americas, edited by Benjamin Hebblethwaite, University of Nebraska Press. 
• 2021       “Subversive Cosmopolitics in the Anthropocene: On Sentient Landscapes and the Ethical Imperative in Northern Peru.” In Climate Politics and the Power of Religion  edited by Evan Berry. Indiana University Press.
• 2018        “The Mapuche Undead Never Forget: Traumatic Memory and Cosmopolitics in Post-Pinochet Chile:” Anthropology and Humanism 43 (2):1-21.
• 2018         “Shamanic Rebirth and the Paradox of Disremembering the Dead Among Mapuche in Chile” In  A Companion to the Anthropology of Death, First Edition. Edited by Antonius C. G. M. Robben, 279-291. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
• 2017         “The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Mapuche Shaman: Remembering, Disremembering, and the Willful Transformation of Memory “ In Death, Mourning and Burial: A Cross-Cultural Reader, Second Edition edited by Antonius C.G.M. Robben, 276-292. Wiley-Blackwell.
• 2016       “The Paradox of Disremembering the Dead: Ritual, Memory, and Embodied Historicity in Mapuche Shamanic Personhood.” Anthropology and Humanism 41.
• Forthcoming 2016  “Indigenous Bibles as Subjectivized Animated Objects: Mapuche Shamanic Literacy and Rebirth.” In Materialities of the Occult, edited by Jonathan Hill and Giovanni Da Col. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
• 2014       “The Potency of Indigenous Bibles and Biography: Mapuche Shamanic Literacy and Historical Consciousness.” American Ethnologist 41 (4): 648–663.
• 2013       “Mapuche Struggles to Obliterate Dominant History: Mythohistory, Spiritual Agency, and Shamanic Historical Consciousness in Southern Chile.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 20 (1): 77–95.
• 2010       “The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Mapuche Shaman: Remembering, Forgetting and the Willful Transformation of Memory.” Journal of Anthropological Research 66 (1): 97–119.
• 2008       “The Re-invention of Mapuche Male Shamans as Catholic Priests: Legitimizing Indigenous Co-gender Identities in Modern Chile.” In Native Christians: Modes and Effects of Christianity among Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, edited by Robin Wright and Aparecida Vilaca, 89–108. Aldershot: Ashgate Press.
• 2005       “The Creation of a Mapuche Sorcerer: Sexual Ambivalence, the Commodification of Knowledge, and the Coveting of Wealth.” Journal of Anthropological Research 61 (3): 317–336.
• 2005       “Gendered Rituals for Cosmic Order: Mapuche Shamanic Struggles for Healing and Fertility.” Journal of Ritual Studies 19 (2): 53–69.
• 2004       “The Mapuche Man Who Became a Woman Shaman: Selfhood, Gender Transgression, and Competing Cultural Norms.” American Ethnologist 31 (3): 440–457.
• 2004       “Ritual Gendered Relationships: Kinship, Marriage, Mastery, and Machi Modes of Personhood.” Journal of Anthropological Research 60 (2): 203–229. Repr.,2010, Women and Indigenous Religions, edited by Sylvia Marcos, 2010, 145–176. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO/Praeger Press.
• 2004       “Shamans’ Pragmatic Gendered Negotiations with Mapuche Resistance Movements and Chilean Political Authorities.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 11 (4): 501–541.
• 2004       “The Struggle for Machi Masculinities: Colonial Politics of Gender, Sexuality and Power in Chile.” Ethnohistory 51 (3): 489–533.
• 2004       “Local Shamanic Knowledges: A Response to Guillaume Boccara.” L’Homme 169: 219–224.
• 2003       “Rethinking Identity and Feminism: Contributions of Mapuche Women and Machi from Southern Chile.” Hypatia 18 (2): 32–57.
• 2001       “The Rise of the Mapuche Moon Priestess in Southern Chile.” Annual Review of Women in World Religions 6: 208–259.
• 2000       “Shamanism as Reflexive Discourse: Gender, Sexuality and Power in the Mapuche Religious Experience.” In Gender, Bodies, Religions, edited by Sylvia Marcos, 275–295. Cuernavaca: ALER.
• 1999       “Studying Mapuche Shaman/Healers from an Experiential Perspective: Ethical and Methodological Problems.” Anthropology of Consciousness 10 (2–3): 35–40.
• 1998       “The Exorcising Sounds of Warfare: Shamanic Healing and the Struggle to Remain Mapuche.” Anthropology of Consciousness 9 (5): 1–16.
• 1996       “Mapuche Women’s Empowerment as Shaman/Healers.” Annual Review of Women in World Religions 4: 57–129.
• 1995       “Renouncing Shamanistic Practice: The Conflict of Individual and Culture Experienced by a Mapuche Machi.” Anthropology of Consciousness 6 (3): 1–16.

Articulos y Capitulos en Castellano y Frances

• 2024 (with Fabien Le Bonniec)    “Justicia chamánica Mapuche y discriminación en los tribunales chilenos: las luchas de la jueza LGBT Karen Atala por la custodia de sus hijas y por el pluralismo jurídico” Scripta Ethnologica Nueva Época 46 (2):29-68.   https://caea.ar/scriptaethnologica/index.php/scripta/article/view/95/124  
• 2020       “Las luchas mapuche para aniquilar a la historia dominante: mitohistoria, capacidad espiritual de accionar y conciencia histórica chamánica en el sur de Chile” MITOLOGICAS, Vol. XXXV: 155-180.
• 2019       “La política subversiva de los lugares sensibles. Cambio climático, ética colectiva y justicia ambiental en el Norte del Perú” “En “Montañas y Paisajes Sagrados Mundos Religiosos, Cambio Climático y Las Implicaciones Del Retiro De Los Glaciares. Editado por Robert Albro. Universidad Antonio Ruiz de Montoya (UARM), Pp. 29-61 Lima Perú.
• 2018       “La Política Subversiva de los Lugares Sentientes’: Cambio Climático, Ética Colectiva y Justicia Ambiental en el Norte de Perú” Scripta Ethnologica, 40:9-38.          
• 2018     “El uso subversivo de documentos de archivo y biblias por Mapuche en Chile y el surgimiento de archivos alternativos” Scripta Ethnologica 39:9-47.
• 2017        “El Fantasma de la Violencia Estatal Chilena en Comunidades Mapuche: Metáforas de Terror, Poder de Accionar de los No-Finados, y Políticas Encarnadas del Sufrimiento.” Mitologicas  32:9-34.
• 2015        "Historias encarnadas colectivas de los Mapuche de Chile: Transformación ritual del pasado y del futuro" Scripta Ethnologica 37: 39-80.
• 2015        “El Tiempo del Trueno Guerrero Mapuche: Lo Silvestre, el Estado Chileno Salvaje, y las Machi Civilizadas" Mitologicas 30: 9-60.
• 2015       Grafismo, Multitemporalidad y Textos como Objetos de Poder en la Biografia de una Machi Mapuche en Chile Revista Chilena de Antropología  31(1):11-29.
• 2014       “Grafismo chamánico, conciencia histórica Mapuche, y biblias como objetos rituales de poder en Chile.” Scripta Ethnologica 36: 42–77. Repr., 2015, Revista Chilena de Antropología 32).
• 2013       “Pasados y futuros corporales performativos: La escritura como una forma chamánica Mapuche para acumular y hacer circular el poder.” Scripta Ethnologica 35: 7–31.
• 2013       “Las mujeres machi en el siglo XX–XI: ¿Personificación de la tradición o desafío a las normas de género?” In Historia de las mujeres en Chile siglos XX–XI, edited by Ana Maria Stuven and Joaquín Fermandois, 433–502. Santiago: Editorial Taurus.
• 2012       “El hombre Mapuche que se convirtió en mujer chamán: Individualidad, transgresión de género y normas culturales en Pugna.” Scripta Ethnologica 33: 9–40.
• 2012       “Las cargas carismáticas del cautiverio Mapuche: La machi Alemana-Mapuche y su conciencia histórica chamánica.” Revista Escrituras Americanas 1 (1): 2–43.
• 2010. “Vida, muerte y renacimiento de una machi Mapuche: Recordar, desrecordar y la transformación deliberada de la memoria.” Revista de Historia Indígena 11: 7–32.
• 2010. “Relaciones de género ritual: Parentesco, matrimonio, dominio y modalidades de persona de los chamanes Mapuche.” Scripta Ethnologica 32: 59–89. Repr.,2010, Revista Austral de Ciencias Sociales 18: 83-106.
• 2010       “Las prácticas espirituales de poder de los machi y su relación con la resistencia Mapuche y el estado chileno.” Revista Chilena de Antropología 21: 9–37.
• 2004       “Rituales de género para el orden cósmico: Luchas chamánicas Mapuche por la totalidad.” Revista Chilena de Antropología 17: 47–74. Repr., 2004, Scripta Ethnologica 26: 9-38.
• 2004       “La lucha por la masculinidad de machi: Políticas coloniales degénero, sexualidad y poder en el sur de Chile.” Revista de Historia Indígena 6: 29–64,
• 2001       “El rol del medicinar en la recreación de la identidad Mapuche: Voces de resistencia, hibridez y transformación en las prácticas de machi” Scripta Ethnologica 23: 89–119.
• 1997       “Las múltiples máscaras de Ngünechen: Las batallas ontológicas y semánticas del ser supremo Mapuche en Chile” Journal of Latin American Lore 20 (1): 173–204. Repr., 1997 Scripta Ethnológica 19.
• 1998       “Les chamanes Mapuche et l’expérience religieuse masculine et féminine” Anthropologie et Sociétés 22 (2): 123–143.
• 1996       “Identidad, espacio y dualidad en los perimontun (visiones) de machi Mapuche” Scripta Ethnologica 18: 37–63.
• 1996       “Imágenes de diversidad y consenso: La cosmovisión Mapuche a través de trés machi”. Aisthesis 28: 120–141. Repr., 1996,  Mitológicas 11.
• 1995       “El rol sacerdotal de la machi en los valles centrales de la Araucanía.” In Modernización o sabiduría en tierra Mapuche? edited by Armando Marileo, Ana Mariella Bacigalupo, Ricardo Salas, Ramón Curivil, Cristián Parker, and Alejandro Saavedra, 51–98. Santiago: Ediciones San Pablo.
• 1995       “La cosmovisión Mapuche a través del pensamiento chamanístico: El estudio de trés casos.” In Comprensión del pensamiento indígena a través de sus relatos orales II, edited by Yosuke Kuramochi, 11–56. Quito: Abya Yala Editions.
• 1994       “El poder de las machi Mapuche en los valles centrales de la Araucanía.” In Comprensión del pensamiento indígena a través de sus expresiones verbales, edited by Yosuke Kuramochi, 11–55. Quito: Abya Yala Editions.
• 1994       “Variación de rol de machi en la cultura Mapuche: Tipología geográfica, adaptiva e iniciática”. Revista Chilena de Antropología 12: 19–43.