Shaylih Muehlmann is Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. She is the Canada Research Chair in Language, Culture and the Environment (2011–2021), a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Member of the Royal Society of Canada.

Her research and teaching have also been recognized with the University of California Press Public Anthropology Prize, the Ton Vallen Award, the Junior Scholar Award from the Anthropology and Environment Society, and UBC’s Best Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Muehlmann earned her PhD from the University of Toronto and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley, before joining UBC in 2010.

Main research themes: Environmental politics; human rights; linguistic anthropology; drug trafficking; water scarcity; the anthropology of the awkward; US-Mexico borderlands; Mexico.

Shaylih Muehlmann’s scholarship examines the intersections of environmental conflict, language, and identity, with a focus on how social processes shape inequality and the formation of social subjects. She brings to her work a deep commitment to ethnographic analysis of contemporary issues, developed across three single-authored books.

Her first book, Where the River Ends (Duke University Press, 2013), explores how the Cucapá people of northern Mexico have experienced a transnational water conflict at the end of the Colorado River. Her second book, When I Wear My Alligator Boots (University of California Press, 2014), analyzes the effects of the so-called “war on drugs” on rural communities in the US–Mexico borderlands. Her most recent book, Call the Mothers: Searching for Mexico’s Disappeared (University of California Press, 2024), investigates the grassroots search movements led by mothers of the disappeared in Mexico.

Together, these works demonstrate her commitment to addressing urgent social and political issues through anthropological research. Her current SSHRC-funded project on narco-animalia extends this trajectory by examining how animals become entangled in the politics and economies of drug trafficking.

Keywords: Environmental politics; linguistic anthropology; drug trafficking; water scarcity; the anthropology of the awkward; US-Mexico borderlands; Mexico.

Interviews

Royal Society of Canada, UBC Studios, November 2016 (view here)

About “Rhizomes and other Uncountables.” Interview with Dr. Colin West. (view here)

About “When I Wear My Alligator Boots” and the war on drugs in northern Mexico. Interview with UBC Affairs. (view here)

Interview with Currents. (view here)

Interview with Artswire. (view here)

Books

• 2024. Call the Mothers: Searching for Mexico’s disappeared. Berkeley, University of California Press. (view here)
• 2014 When I Wear My Alligator Boots: Narco-Culture in the US-Mexico Borderlands. Berkeley: University of California Press. (view here)
• 2013 Where the River Ends: Contested Indigeneity in the Mexican Colorado Delta. Duke University Press. (view here)

Selected Journal Articles and Book Chapters

• 2020. The Narco Uncanny. Public Culture, 32(2 (91)), pp.327-348. (view pdf)
• 2019. “Clandestine Infrastructures: Illicit Connectivities in the US-Mexico Borderlands Infrastructure,” In Environment and Life in the Anthopocene. Edited by Kregg Heatherington. Durham NC: Duke University Press. Pp.45-65.(view pdf)
• 2018. The Gender of the War on Drugs. Annual Review of Anthropology. Volume 47: 315-330.(view pdf)
• 2017.“‘Hasta la Madre!’ Mexican Mothers against ‘The War on Drugs’,” Social History of Alcohol and     Drugs 31: 85-106.(view pdf)
• 2015. “Languages Die Like Rivers”: Entangled Endangerments in the Colorado Delta. In Fernando Vidal and Nina Das, (eds.) Endangerment, Biodiversity and Culture. London: Routledge. (view pdf)
• 2014. “The Speech Community and Beyond: Language and the Nature of the Social Aggregate.” In Nick Enfield, Paul Kockelman and Jack Sidnell, eds. Cambridge Handbook in Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Pp. 577-599. (view pdf)

• 2012. Rhizomes and other uncountables: the malaise of enumeration in Mexico’s Colorado River Delta. American Ethnologist. 39(2):339-353. (view pdf)
• 2011. Von Humboldt’s parrot and the countdown of last speakers in the Colorado Delta. Language & Communication. doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2011.05.001. (view pdf)
• 2009. How do Real Indians Fish? Neoliberal Multiculturalism and Contested Indigeneities in the Colorado Delta. American Anthropologist. 111(4): 468-479. (view pdf)
• 2008.“Spread Your Ass Cheeks”: And Other Things that Should not be Said in Indigenous Languages. American Ethnologist. 35(1): 34-48. (view pdf)
• Defending Diversity: Staking Out a Common, Global Interest. In Duchêne, Alexandre and Monica Heller eds. Discourses of Endangerment: Interest and Ideology in the Defence of Language. New York: Continuum. Pp. 14-34. (view pdf)

Dr. Muehlmann has received numerous awards for her scholarly work including the 2009 University of California Press Public anthropology publishing Prize, the 2012 Ton Vallen Award and the 2012 Junior Scholar Award from the Anthropology and Environment Society. Dr. Muehlmann was also awarded the Best Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2012 from Anthropology Students Association at the University of British Columbia. In 2016 Dr. Muehlmann was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020.

Awards

Guggenheim Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, 2020-2021 (view)

Killam Faculty Research Fellowship, University of British Columbia, 2018 (view)

Social Science and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant 2017-2021

Member of the Royal Society of Canada, 2016, Royal Society of Canada (view)

Wall Scholar Award, 2015, Peter Wall Institute of Advanced Studies

Junior Scholar Prize, 2012, Anthropology and Environment Society (view)

Best Undergraduate Teaching Award 2011-2012, Anthropology Students Association, UBC.

Ton Vallen Award, 2012, The Babylon Center, Tilburg University (view)

Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Language, Culture and the Environment (view)

Richard Carly Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship, Wenner Gren Foundation 2012

Social Science and Humanities Research Council Standard Research Grant 2010-2013

Wenner-Gren Postdoctoral Research Award and Osmundsen Initiative Funding, Wenner-Gren Foundation 2010-2012

Associate Professor, Linguistic/Sociolocultural Anthropology

Canada Research Chair in Language, Culture and the Environment