Miguel Cuj

PhD Candidate (Mesoamerica, K’iche’ population, Food and Nutrition Anthropology, Ontologies, Indigenous Studies, Decolonial approach, Health, Collectives)

Miguel Cuj is a Guatemalan with Indigenous roots. He has a Nutrition degree from San Carlos University, which was supported by the Maya Educational Foundation scholarship program in Guatemala. Miguel was a fellow in the Tobacco Control Fellowship program of the Cardiovascular Surgery Unit of Guatemala (UNICAR). He has worked in several projects in rural Guatemala with Maya population. Also, Miguel has a Master of Arts in Latin American Studies & Anthropology and a certificate in Global Health at Vanderbilt University.

         Over the last five years, Miguel has fostered meaningful collaborations with women's groups in the Maya K'iche' community of Chi u wi meq'in ja, a hamlet within the town of Santa Maria Chiquimula, Totonicapán, Guatemala. Through immersive ethnographic fieldwork, Miguel has come to recognize that the intricate food culture of K'iche' Maya women is the product of complex interactions between diverse contexts, various objects, and subjects involved. Miguel's specific research focus centers on the K’iche’ language and how it classifies and categorizes different types of foods, illuminating the profound impact these classifications have on nutrition, agriculture, and consumption practices. Through his work, Miguel can demonstrate that Indigenous food knowledge systems are intricately woven into the fabric of this community, involving material, symbolic, and biological dimensions, making them resistant to easy translation into conventional Western dietary norms.

         His research interests are food anthropology, Indigenous (K'iche' Maya) ontologies of food, health inequalities, inequities and disparities, K'iche Maya food, and bio-communicability in health. His research has been supported by Wenner-Gren Foundation, HASTAC program, James Lawson Institute, and the Center for Digital Humanities at Vanderbilt University. Since 2021, he has been at the helm of GuateLab, a student-led initiative at Vanderbilt University. GuateLab is supported by the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies (CLACX), and The Curb Center for Art, Enterprise & Public Policy at Vanderbilt University. Together with his Guatemalan peers, they have cultivated GuateLab into a hub for engaging in dialogues about the humanities from a unique student perspective.