April 2015
Dr. Lee Cabatingan has conducted extensive ethnographic research in Cuban and Anglophone Caribbean courts, including long term fieldwork at a newly established regional tribunal in Trinidad & Tobago, where she analyzed the Court’s complex relationship to region-formation. In her current project, Dr. Cabatingan seeks to explore how public debates over race, crime, and (under)development in Trinidad challenge classic theories of sovereignty. She hopes that this research will lead to a rethinking of the relationship between law and sovereignty and allow for a globally southern perspective to find a voice amongst predominantly globally northern theories. Dr. Cabatingan received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, where she held a Mellon Foundation Fellowship during her final year. Prior to that, she worked as a litigator in San Francisco after receiving a J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. She earned her A.B. from Princeton University.