The Expert is a sociocultural anthropologist with a research program focused on state formation, political culture, and out-migration in Honduras. He has been studying Honduras and conducting non-governmental (NGO) work in the country since 2001. He was present during the 2009 military coup, and has since studied how these events polarized Honduran society and have increased different forms of violence.
The Expert's doctoral dissertation focused on the political activism of schoolteachers and post-coup policies of governance. During the course of conducting ethnographic research inside Honduran schools he learned a great deal about Hondurans' experiences with violence – including gang violence and gender-based violence. At the University of Connecticut he teaches courses on contemporary Latin America, and the Anthropology of Migration.
LGBTQ; Child abuse; gender-based violence, domestic violence; Forced marriage; Trafficking; Land Tenure Disputes; Ethnic, religious, or tribal discrimination or persecution; Torture/Risk of political persecution/Risk from state actors; Risk from non-state actors; risk of retaliation; safe internal relocation; sufficiency of protection; healthcare access/health systems capacity; mental illness; HIV/AIDS; gang-related violence; political violence (including extrajudicial killings and or the hiring of gang members or police officers as hitmen); targeting of political activists, especially schoolteachers, journalists, intellectuals, and students
The Expert has taken on over 30 different cases for Hondurans who flee from gang-related violence, domestic & gender-based violence, police & military-related violence, and different forms of political violence – mainly in the U.S., but also in the U.K.
Levy, Jordan. (2022). “Reluctant State Agents: Schoolteachers and Governing Authorities in Post-Coup Honduras.” Political and Legal Anthropology Review. [DOI: 10.1111/plar.12499]
Levy, Jordan. (2020). “Honduran Political Culture and Ambivalent Experiences during the Outbreak and Immediate Aftermath of the 2009 Coup.” A Contracorriente: Una Revista de Estudios Latinoamericanos. 17(3): 227–254.
Levy, Jordan and Sandra Estrada. (2020). “‘La Gente de Washington es la Más Tranquila’ (People from Washington are the Most Laid-Back): An Ethnographic Perspective on Honduran and Salvadoran Migration to the Pacific Northwest.” Journal of Northwest Anthropology. 54(1):1–21.
Levy, Jordan. (2019). “Reforming Schools, Disciplining Teachers: Decentralization and Privatization of Education in Honduras.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 50(2):170–188.
Levy, Jordan. (2017). “Schoolteachers and National ‘Public’ Education in Honduras: Navigating the Reforms and Re-Founding the State.” Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 22(1):137–156.