Nathalie Koc-Menard

I completed my BA-Licenciatura in Social Anthropology at the Universidad Catolica del Peru, in 2001. The final fieldwork that I need to get this degree was a challenge that confronted me for the first time with my racial and social backgrounds, in an Andean village. It was the fist time I was called 'gringa.'

Months later in 2002, I joined the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (PTRC), as a fieldresearcher to work in the Ayacucho Area. The two years that I worked there were the most important, significatibe as well as challenged sad. I end this work looking to better understand the violence, suffering and the racialized country in which I lived.

In 2004 I was accepted as PHD student at the University of Michigan, where I continued the work that I started when I was working for the PTRC. These years in the PhD program in Anthropology have given me the analytical tools to better understand why the communityin which I focus my work, Oreja de Perro, is called itself a 'marginal community.