Mala Htun

Mala Htun is a Professor of Political Science at the University of New Mexico. She is the author of Sex and the State: Abortion, Divorce, and the Family under Latin American Dictatorships and Democracies (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and her work has appeared in Perspectives on Politics, Latin American Research Review, and Politics and Gender, among other journals and edited volumes.

Her article, “Is Gender Like Ethnicity? The Political Representation of Identity Groups,” won the Heinz Eulau award from the American Political Science Association and she has been supported by fellowships from the National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and the National Security Education Program. A former fellow of the Kellogg Institute of the University of Notre Dame and the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard, she holds a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard and an A.B. in international relations from Stanford.

Mala’s current research focuses on the politics of representing women and ethnic and racial minorities in Latin America and worldwide.