G. Maris Jones

Assistant Director of Academic Projects and Programs

Phone
504-314-2183 
Stone Center Departments
The Stone Center
People Classification
Staff
Tulane Affiliation
Administrator
Region
  • Caribbean
Smiling woman with dreadlocks, dark green blazer, and amber beaded necklace

Biography

G. Maris Jones, a New Orleans native who joined the staff in 2026, oversees summer abroad initiatives and academic-year programming at both the Stone Center and the Cuban and Caribbean Studies Institute. Before coming to Tulane, Dr. Jones worked in study abroad at the School for International Training as a traveling professor for the International Honors Program: Climate Change, which traveled to Ecuador, Morocco, and Nepal. As a committed experiential educator with a history of working with programs in Hawaiʻi, Alaska, and Portugal, Dr. Jones is deeply invested in student growth and learning, both within and beyond the classroom. An anthropologist by training, Dr. Jones’ research interests include environmental and climate justice, Afro-Indigenous epistemologies, human/other-than-human relations, decolonial methodologies, U.S. imperialism, and archipelagic geographies. 

Additional Info

Key Responsibilities 

  • Organize and administer Summer in Brazil, Mayan Language Institute, and Summer in Panama programs 
  • Manage ongoing digital humanities projects, such as the Latin American Writers Series, Cuba in New Orleans: An Oral History Project, and Centennial Celebration project 
  • Serve as the principal liaison with Latin Americanist Graduate Organization 
  • Plan and coordinate humanities on-campus and virtual programming for the Stone Center and the Cuban and Caribbean Studies Institute 
  • Academic enrichment programming, including TUSCLA Model OAS.  

Research

Climate change, diaspora studies, traditional ecological knowledge, disaster studies, political economy, U.S. Empire, New Orleans, Puerto Rico, and Hawaiʻi.

Degrees

  • Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, Anthropology (graduate certificates in Africana Studies, Latin American and Latinx Studies, and Experimental Ethnography), 2024
  • A.B. (Hons.), Brown University, Anthropology and Portuguese & Brazilian Studies, 2015

Distinctions

  • National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, 2018-2024
  • Social Science Research Council Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship, 2021
  • Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, 2013-2015

Languages

  • Portuguese
  • Spanish
  • Italian
  • Arabic

Overseas Experience

  • Brazil
  • Puerto Rico
  • Hawai'i
  • Ecuador
  • Morocco
  • Nepal
  • Portugal
  • Kenya

Selected Publications

  • Jones, Gillian Maris. 2019. “They Don’t Care About Us: An Examination of Cultural Citizenship and Political Activism Among Afro-Brazilian Youth in Salvador, Bahia.” Transnational Trills in the Africana World. Cheryl Sterling, ed.
  • Jones, Gillian Maris. 2018. "Black Lives Abroad: Encounters of Diasporic Solidarity in Brazil." Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 41 (4): 831-855. Special Issue: M4BL and the Critical Movement for Black Lives. Brittney Cooper and Treva Lindsey, ed