Mary Pena is a Mellon Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College in the Department of Anthropology. Specializing in Afro-Caribbean diasporas, race and gender, and urban ecology, she holds a PhD in Anthropology and a graduate certificate in Museum Studies from the University of Michigan and was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities at Princeton University. 

Her current book project examines the politics and aesthetics of spatial change in Puerto Plata, an Atlantic port city in the Dominican Republic. By positioning architecture as a cultural artifact within layered landscapes, the project explores how urban residents understand the built environment amid large-scale urban renewal efforts tied to Dominican progress ideals. It uncovers the racial blueprint of this state vision, and turns to embodied, sensory experiences of place to trace counter-histories and the legacies of black Atlantic material culture.

As a 2022-25 Solidarity Fellow with the Diaspora Solidarities Lab, Pena co-curated exhibitions that include Alive in their garden (2022), Un-bound (2023), and Destierro (2024). Diasporic Collage + Coastal Relations: Enacting Diaspora, the companion book for a major exhibition held at the Avery Research Center in Charleston, SC, is currently out from CENTRO Press. 

Her publications have appeared in Fieldsights on Cultural Anthropology, entanglements, Open Cultural Studies, Absinthe Journal, and the edited volume Gender: Space. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Society of Visual Anthropology. 

She was previously a community programming organizer at Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn, NY and co-founder of Making Sensory Ethnography, a working group dedicated to experimental formats of conveying research using curatorial and artistic methods. Pena has also co-directed a short documentary, Eggun (2017), made through EICTV in Cuba, and worked as a production designer on the feature film, Drip Like Coffee (2024), which world-premiered at American Black Film Festival and screened at Newfest, and BFI London, among other festivals.