Alexandra Golla is a tenured Professor of Anthropology at Los Angeles Harbor College (LACCD), where she has been a faculty member since 2013 and has served as Vice Chair of the Division of Social Sciences since 2016. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY), a position she has held since 2021. In 2024, she received the John Jay Outstanding Mentorship Award from the Department of Sociology. She is also an Adjunct Professor at Oxnard Community College, where she began teaching in 2025. She previously taught at New York University, Fordham University, and Westchester Community College.
In addition to teaching, Golla spent four years as a textbook reviewer and ancillary editor at W. W. Norton and has written for American Ethnologist, Ethnography in Context, and Anthropology of Work Review. She has peer-reviewed for Ethnography and Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and has presented papers at several Annual Meetings of the American Anthropological Association.
Her current research interests include transnational crime, victimology, multispecies ethnography, and the ethnography of genetics.
Since 2025, Golla has been a member of the NGO Committee on the Status of Women, NY (CSW/NY). It convenes global civil society for the annual UN Commission on the Status of Women. The CSW is a UN body that monitors the implementation of the Beijing Declaration.
Golla is an elected Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Royal Society of Biology, and the Linnean Society, and a member of the American Anthropological Association and the American Society of Criminology.
Born in Campinas, Brazil, Golla was raised in Brazil, London, and Fairfield, Connecticut. Her father was a software developer, and her mother was a journalist for Fortune magazine and later Director of Communications at the Brearley School. Golla earned a BA in anthropology from Cornell University, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She earned a PhD in sociocultural anthropology from UCLA, where she was awarded the UCLA University Fellowship. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the UCLA School of Medicine, during which she was twice the recipient of the NIH National Research Service Award.
Outside of academia, Golla is active in philanthropy. She supports The Innocence Project, The Legal Aid Society, New York-Presbyterian, the New York Philharmonic, and is on the Women’s Committee of the Central Park Conservancy.
FIELDNOTES:
Her last name, Golla, rhymes with ‘cola.’
She spoke French at home growing up and minored in French at university.
Ambassador Satya Nandan was a family friend who gave her a copy of The Family of Man by Edward Steichen, leading to her interest in ethnography.
As an undergraduate, she completed archaeological fieldwork and excavation at La Piana, a Late Etruscan settlement near Siena, Italy.
Spent two terms at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford to study with Prof. Elizabeth Edwards FBA, Photography Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum.
From 2006 to 2008, she was Teaching Assistant to Jared Diamond, professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author.
Her UCLA doctoral committee included Sherry Ortner and Mariko Tamanoi. As part of her research, she participated as an extra in Dexter, Entourage, Ugly Betty, and Cold Case. Her dissertation was titled Risky Business: Aspiring Hollywood Actors and the Selling of the Self.
Her other interests include travel, classical music, running, and working on her debut novel.