Jason De León

Jason De León is an anthropologist, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer (2013), and a MacArthur Foundation 2017 Fellow. He studies the migration from Latin America to the United States of clandestine migrants crossing the U.S.–Mexico border. De León is Professor of Anthropology and Chicana, Chicano, and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and Director of the Undocumented Migration Project, a non-profit research/arts/education collective aimed at documenting and raising awareness about migration issues. Since 2009, he has traveled frequently to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona to collect artifacts left behind by migrants trying to gain access to the United States. His Undocumented Migration Project includes more than 9000 objects, some of which are on display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. From 2013 to 2017, he co-curated an exhibition of these artifacts and other materials collected by the Undocumented Migration Project in a show called State of Exception that was featured in multiple locations including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit (MOCAD) and the New School in New York City. He is Head Curator of the global participatory exhibition Hostile Terrain 94 that will be installed in 130 locations on six continents in 2021.De León is a Mexican-Filipino American Army brat who grew up largely in McAllen, Texas near the Mexican border in the Rio Grande Valley and Long Beach, California. His native language is English and he is also fluent in Spanish.Outside of his academic work, he is a musician who has been involved in various bands and musical projects over the years. He hosted a television show on the Discovery Channel in 2011 called American Treasures.