Robin C. Reineke §
Robin Reineke is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research explores social and political responses to deaths and disappearances. She focuses especially on forensic responses, and has conducted ethnographic research and forensic anthropological practice in the US-Mexico borderlands for over fifteen years.
From 2006 – 2020, she spent significant time working with the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner, doing ethnographic research and forensic anthropological practice to address unidentified human remains and missing persons in the borderlands. These initiatives included the development of the nonprofit, nongovernmental organization, the Colibrí Center for Human Rights, which she co-founded and directed from 2013 – 2019.
Dr. Reineke is currently working on her first book, With the Dead, For the Living: Forensic Care in the US-Mexico Borderlands, which is an ethnography about forensic human identification in southern Arizona. Together with Dr. Natalia Mendoza Rockwell, Dr. Reineke is currently working on a binational research project, Forensic Citizenship in the Borderlands, which is a visual, oral history, and ethnographic project is focused on understanding civilian forensic expertise and critical practice on both sides of the Arizona-Sonora border.
Dr. Reineke is Assistant Research Social Scientist at the Southwest Center and Assistant Professor in the School of Anthropology, both at the University of Arizona.