Patricia Foxen

About Patricia Foxen

Patricia Foxen is a cultural anthropologist with 30 years of experience working in academic, policy and program contexts with Latino immigrant and refugee populations in the U.S. and Canada. She has written extensively about Central American migration and indigenous communities and is the author of the book In Search of Providence: Transnational Mayan Identities (Vanderbilt University Press, 2008; updated edition, 2020), as well as numerous peer-reviewed articles and major reports. Dr. Foxen served for 14 years as Deputy Director of Research at UnidosUS (formerly the National Council of La Raza), the largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the U.S., where she oversaw data-driven policy-oriented research, directed and published community-based research on the integration and well-being of Latino youth and families, and communicated findings to external audiences such as policy makers, media outlets, practitioners and universities. Dr. Foxen has taught at Vanderbilt University and the University of Toronto, has been a visiting fellow at Yale University and American University, and is a frequent guest lecturer. She has served on boards and advisory bodies including the Population Reference Bureau, Child Trends Hispanic Institute Advisory Council, the Guatemala Human Rights Commission, and the Alianza for Youth Justice. She earned her Doctorate in Anthropology and her Master’s in Medical Anthropology from McGill University. She also holds a Master’s in Public Health from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Bryn Mawr College.