DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

Regional Focus:  Americas

Subfield(s):  Cultural Anthropology; Linguistic Anthropology

Interest(s):  Inequality; Migration; Displacement; Globalization

Doris Warriner draws on cultural and linguistic anthropology to investigate the social, political, economic, and ideological dimensions of language, literacy, and mobility with a focus on how social and communicative practices are influenced by large-scale processes such as displacement, ethnic conflict, immigration, and transnationalism. In her scholarship and teaching, she applies insights from this inquiry to questions and
concerns relevant to the fields of anthropology, education, and applied linguistics.

Warriner joined the anthropology department at Northwestern University in 2023. Prior to that appointment, she was Professor of English at Arizona State University. Her publications have appeared in Theory into Practice, Curriculum Inquiry, the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, and the International Multilingual Research Journal. In addition, Warriner edited Refugee Education across the Lifespan: Mapping experiences of language learning and language use (Springer, 2021) and co-edited two volumes: Extending applied linguistics for social impact: Cross-disciplinary collaborations in diverse spaces of public inquiry (Bloomsbury, 2021) and Critical reflections on research methods: Power and equity in complex multilingual contexts (Multilingual Matters, 2019).

In one current project, Warriner is investigating how Ukrainian migrants living and working in the Chicago area make sense of and respond to recent trends in U.S. immigration policy and other kinds of material constraints, including ideologies of language. In a second project, Warriner is drawing on theories from linguistic anthropology and semiotics to trace the patterns, rhythms, and interconnective tissue that facilitates meaning making and world building in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.