Sylvanna M. Falcón is an Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology with a doctoral emphasis in Feminist Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the recipient of two postdoctoral fellowships: (1) the University of California, Office of the President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship (2006-2008) and (2) the Woodrow Wilson National Foundation’s Junior Faculty Career Enhancement Fellowship (2013-2014). She is the author of Power Interrupted: Antiracist and Feminist Activists inside the United Nations, [University of Washington Press, 2016] and the co-editor of New Directions in Feminism and Human Rights [Routledge, 2011]. Her work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, including Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, Feminist Formations, Journal of Women's History, Gender & Society, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Societies Without Borders, and Social Justice. She is a former UN co-consultant to the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women.
My areas of expertise are in human rights, feminism, racism, globalization, and intersectionality. Intersectionality signifies how interconnected forms of discrimination exist at the experiential and structural levels. In my first book, Power Interrupted: Antiracist and Feminist Activists inside the United Nations (2016), I examined how women activists from the Américas have expanded global level discussions about racism and antiracism through an intersectionality approach. This research bridges the academic concept of intersectionality with its activist application to underscore how even the language of human rights has to better integrate an antiracist component.
