Maria Fernanda Escallón is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oregon. She is originally from Bogotá, Colombia, where she completed her BA and MA in Anthropology and Archaeology at the Universidad de Los Andes. She also holds an MA (2009) and PhD (2016) in Anthropology from Stanford University. Her work focuses on cultural heritage, race, diversity politics, ethnicity, and inequality in Latin America. Prior to joining the Anthropology Department at the University of Oregon,  she was an 2015-2016 Dissertation Fellow in the Department of Black Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara.

Escallón's research project, "COVID-19, Faculty Activism, and the Future of a Carework Policy in Academia," involves a comparative analysis of five U.S.-based universities that will examine both the caregiving policies that faculty have proposed and institutional responses to them. The goal is to analyze universities’ plans, priorities, and limitations in addressing the carework crisis in order to effectively narrow the academic equity gaps exacerbated by COVID-19.