Biography

Kiera Eckhardt is a Doctoral Candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of Kansas.

She graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University in 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology and minors in Spanish and Interdisciplinary Studies. During her undergraduate studies, Kiera served as Anthropology Club President and Social Chair of the Phi Eta Sigma National Honor Society. She was awarded the Seidler Undergraduate Scholarly Collaboration Fellowship, where she conducted survey-based research on perceptions of American identity and language use in the United States with Dr. Myra Mendible.

Kiera also served in Peace Corps Ecuador as a Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) Volunteer, and as a Refugee Mentor Coordinator through AmeriCorps VISTA in Tampa, Florida. She graduated from Illinois State University in 2023 with a Master of Science degree in Anthropology and Applied Community and Economic Development. During her graduate studies, Kiera served as President of the Applied Community and Economic Development Student Association and as a member of the Graduate Student Council.

Kiera worked as a Research Analyst for the Illinois Sentencing Policy Advisory Council and was the first anthropologist to be hired by the State of Illinois to conduct qualitative interviews with formerly incarcerated persons and stakeholders of the criminal legal system. She also assisted in quantitative data analyses of Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) data, and Criminal History Record Information (CHRI). Her first paper:

• Developing Qualitative Research Questions for Illinois Post-Release Prison Analysis (Illinois State University Digital Archives)

was published based on her research with Dr. Kathryn Bocanegra and the University of Illinois at Chicago on the "Impact of Long-Term Prison Sentences” research project.

At the University of Kansas, Kiera was the first anthropologist to be awarded the prestigious Madison & Lila Self Graduate Fellowship. She has also been awarded the Tinker Field Research Grant through the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies, and the Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) Academic Year Fellowship to study Brazilian Portuguese through the U.S. Department of Education.

Her current research focuses on legal violence, migration governance, and citizenship, where she is conducting a comparative ethnology of refugee integration in Quito, Guayaquil, and Puyo, Ecuador. Her long-term goal is to advocate for humanitarian migration practices, and to help those in need through policy advocacy research.