Manuela L. Picq is a Senior Lecturer in the Departments of Political Science and Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies at Amherst College (USA). She is the author of scholarly books and articles, including Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State (2024, co-authored with Andrew Canessa) and Vernacular Sovereignties: Indigenous Women Challenging World Politics (2018) translated to Spanish by Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. She is one of the editors of Public Humanities, an open access scholarly journal by Cambridge University Press. She contributes to international media outlets and works at the intersection of scholarship, activism and journalism, which led her to be detained and expelled from Ecuador in 2015. She was nominated a New Generation of Public Intellectuals (2018), featured in the FemiList 100 (2021) of women working in law, policy, and peacebuilding across the Global South, and received the 2024 Outstanding Activist Scholar Award from the International Studies Association. In Ecuador, she works with water defenders, feminist colectives, and coordinated the electoral campaign of presidential candidate Yaku Pérez Guartambel.