Degrees:
Ph.D., Univ. of California, Berkeley
M.A., Univ. of California, Berkeley
A.B., Harvard Univ.
Amanda J. Guzmán is an anthropological archaeologist with a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. She specializes in the field of museum anthropology with a focus on the history of collecting and exhibiting Puerto Rico at the intersection of issues of intercultural representation and national identity formation.
Guzmán is also the co-director of Trinity's Center for Caribbean Studies where she established an annual newsletter and a student researcher team model which among other organizational tasks, has expanded the center's website content to include photo essays, faculty interviews, and research blogs.
She was a member of the 2024-2025 inaugural cohort of the Rooted + Relational research initiative around the theme of Archives, Memory, & the Present Past of Puerto Rico at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, CUNY. In 2025, she began research as a Co-PI on a three-year Higher Learning Grant in Environmental Justice Studies from the Mellon Foundation. With a record of fellowships awarded by the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Museum of American History and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Guzmán has a demonstrated background handling and interpreting object and archival material across varied collection-holding cultural institutions. She supports undergraduate anthropological training beyond the classroom through academic year research assistantships and regular participation in the Summer Research Program as well as the Public Humanities Collaborative. Recent summer research has culminated in a 2024 blog co-authored with a team of anthropology majors for the Council for Museum Anthropology entitled, " Material Storytelling: Student Reflections on Object-Based Research." Full Project List -Public Humanities Collaborative Projects: 2025 From Archive to Interface: Narrating Hartford Environmental Histories.
2024 Material Histories: Object Digitization and Institutional Storytelling as Practice. 2021 Hashtag Memories: Puerto Rican Community Archiving as Collaborative Place-making Practice. Summer Research Program Projects:2023 Teaching the Caribbean: Digital Scholarship as an Open Educational Resource. 2022 Of/By/For: Anthropological Models of Community Engaged Research. Guzmán applies her collections experience as well as her commitment to working with and for multiple publics to her object-based inquiry teaching practice that privileges a co-production of knowledge through modelling of cultural work. As a former community learning faculty fellow and advisory board member, she actively collaborates with the Center for Hartford Engagement and Research through community learning courses. Guzmán has hosted class speaker series, focused on Puerto Rican and museum studies, to promote student interactions with scholars and cultural workers.
Guzmán serves as a board member on the Council for Museum Anthropology and the Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Stowe Center for Literary Activism. She is a member of the International Council of Museums. |