Laura Hobson Herlihy

Laura Hobson Herlihy

Class of 1980

Anthropologist, Author, Indigenous Rights Defender

Laura Hobson Herlihy graduated in anthropology from Tulane (B.A.), University of Louisiana (M.A.), and University of Kansas (Ph.D.). Since 2001, she has taught as a Lecturer at University of Kansas Center of Latin American and Caribbean Studies and garnered three Fulbright grants to Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua. In 2012, Pro-Quest named Herlihy’s book, The Mermaid and the Lobster Diver (University of New Mexico Press), as a choice book for undergraduates. More recently, she has published as an independent journalist about the current political crisis in Nicaragua and violence against Indigenous peoples.

Laura Herlihy is most proud of the study abroad program she developed in Central America. She serves as director of a U.S. Department of Education-approved indigenous Miskitu language summer program. Herlihy speaks Miskitu fluently, co-hosts a radio program in Nicaragua that promotes Indigenous music, and serves as a U.S. Immigration Court Translator.

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