About Me:
Dr. Margaret Willson, Bahia Street’s International Director, holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from the London School of Economics. A short visit to Brazil in 1991 had a profound impact on her, and she returned to the city of Salvador to conduct research on capoeira angola, gender, race, and class in northeastern Brazil. There, she met and worked with sociologist and community activist Rita Conceição. In 1996, she partnered with Ms. Conceição to found Bahia Street, aiming to break the cycles of poverty and violence she had experienced first-hand, living in the shantytowns of Salvador.
Dr. Willson devoted herself to the Bahia Street project full-time in 1998. From her office in Seattle, she currently oversees Bahia Street’s worldwide operations, including programs and development in the United States, Europe, and Brazil.
She brings to Bahia Street a wide range of international experience, having lived, worked, and studied in the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Europe, and Brazil. She did fieldwork research with Papua New Guinea-born Chinese traders, living in Papua New Guinea for almost two years. Other research projects included the history of Chinese immigration to the Pacific Northwest, including the smuggling trade and institutionalized discrimination. Working through the Australian National University, she also studied the effect of the media in Papua New Guinea.
Dr. Willson has taught at University of Sussex, England; Western Washington University; and Lewis and Clark College. She studied Mongolian at the University of Inner Mongolia and Scots Gaelic at the Sol Mor Ostaig on the Isle of Skye, Scotland.
While completing graduate school, Dr. Willson was a Film Officer for the Royal Anthropological Institute in London. She enlarged their film library, reviewed films, and served as a liaison between documentary television directors and anthropologists. She also worked for British television as an Anthropological Advisor and Associate Producer for documentaries on such regions as Inner Mongolia and Tibet.
Dr. Willson has served on the Governor’s Rehabilitation Council for Services to the Blind in the state of Washington since 2000 and has been chair since 2003. She also serves on the board of the Native American Scholarship Program for the Channel Foundation.
Her writing has been published in a wide range of publications, including Practicing Anthropology, Ethnos, Visual Anthropology and The Journal for the Society of Humanistic Anthropology. In 1995, she edited Taboo: Identity, Sexuality, and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork with Don Kulick, and in 2005, her work was included in the volume Fat: The Anthropology of Obsession. Dr. Willson is also the author of Dance Lest We All Fall Down, a book on Bahia Street.
Area(s) of Expertise
Gender, race, and class studies in Northeastern Brazil
Current Area of Employment
International Director of Bahia Street
