Polly Lauer

Postdoctoral Fellow

Overview

Polly Lauer is a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow. She researches Indigenous media from the mid-twentieth century to the present. Her book project, Struggling for Air: The Politics of Resilience in a Maya K’iche’ Radio Station, 1959-2020, examines the history of the oldest Maya K’iche’ radio station in Guatemala. This interdisciplinary, collaborative project draws on ethnographic and archival sources to document how Indigenous actors wielded communications technologies to defend language, community, and autonomy through periods of extreme violence and repression. Her research has been supported by a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, the Tinker Foundation, the MacMillan Center, and the Yale History Department. Polly holds a Ph.D. in History from Yale University, where her dissertation was awarded distinction and the Arthur & Mary Wright Prize.

Research Focus

Indigenous History

Modern Latin American History

Maya K'iche' Language & Culture

Community Media 

Agrarian Studies

Collaborative Research Methods

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