Ernesto Benitez

Ernesto Benitez holds a PhD in Global and Sociocultural Studies with a concentration in Sociocultural Anthropology from Florida International University (2021). His long-term research is grounded in a decade-long ethnographic engagement with the Amazonian Kichwa (also spelled Quichua) people of Ecuador’s Napo province. He has paid particular attention to the ecotourism boom that occurred in Ecuador’s Upper Amazon in the early 1990s and the impact it has had on the livelihoods and identities of Kichwa people, many of whom have gradually shifted from agricultural and subsistence-based activities to service-based work in ecotourism. 

After his Postdoctoral Fellowship, Benitez was invited to join the UVA Department of Anthropology as an assistant professor, where he has taught undergraduate courses in anthropology such as “Contemporary Indigenous Peoples in Latin America” and “Topics on the Anthropology of Tourism”.