Linda Rabben is associate research professor in the Anthropology Department of the University of Maryland. She worked on human rights issues as a researcher, editor, writer, and activist for more than twenty-five years. She received a Ph.D. in anthropology and Latin American studies from Cornell University in 1981. She is the author of Give Refuge to the Stranger: The Past, Present and Future of Sanctuary (Left Coast Press, 2011), Fierce Legion of Friends: A History of Human Rights Campaigns and Campaigners (Quixote Center, distributed by University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), and Brazil’s Indians and the Onslaught of Civilization (University of Washington Press, 2004), an expanded edition of Unnatural Selection: The Yanomami, the Kayapó and the Onslaught of Civilization (Pluto Press, 1998); and translator of Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes, by Gomercindo Rodrigues (University of Texas Press, 2007). Her articles on human rights have appeared in periodicals including The Nation, Cultural Survival Quarterly, and Discovery Channel Magazine. For her writing on Brazil she won the Spann Memorial Essay Prize of the Eugene V. Debs Foundation and a Catholic Press Association award. She served on the American Anthropological Association's Committee for Human Rights, the Brazilian Studies Association's executive committee and its human rights task force, and the Academic Freedom and Human Rights Committee of the Latin American Studies Association. In 2013 she was appointed a faculty fellow at American University’s School of International Service in Washington, D.C.
