Monica Dehart is a Professor at the University of Puget Sound. She is a graduate of the University of California Davis and holds an MA and PhD from Stanford University.
Monica is an anthropologist who studies the cultural policies of economic development in Central America. Her work addresses gender, class, race, and ethnic differences in defining the actors, processes, and outcomes of development projects, both locally and globally.
In recent years, her research has focused on relations between China and Central America. Based on ethnographic research in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, it explores the different ways in which China, including the People's Republic of China, Taiwan and the local Chinese diaspora, has assimilated in the region and how these multiple ways are reconfiguring the nature and challenges of the local development.
Her publications include “Ethnic Entrepreneurs: Identity and Development Politics in Latin America” (Stanford University Press, 2010) and “Transpacific Developments: The Politics of Multiple Chinas in Central America (Cornell University Press, 2021).