Each year, the MacArthur Foundation announces its MacArthur Fellows or “Geniuses,” a class of researchers, scientists, artists, entrepreneurs and more who are changing the world through their endless creativity and groundbreaking contributions. And each year, Under the Radar with Callie Crossley highlights New England recipients of the award through its ongoing series “The Genius Next Door.” This is the first installment highlighting the Class of 2025.
For Brown University professor Ieva Jusionyte, a cultural and legal anthropologist whose groundbreaking studies in global borders earned her a coveted 2025 MacArthur Genius Grant, her career is a compilation of what caught her eye throughout the years.
“I studied political science in college,” Jusionyte said. “I took an anthropology class. I was interested in doing more. I got the Fulbright Fellowship. I came to the U.S. for one year for a master’s program. I wanted to study more. I saved for a PhD. I became a firefighter in the meantime. I don’t know; I just go with the flow.”
Jusionyte, whose work has taken her from the Middle East to India to Argentina, set her sights closer to home for her most recent books: 2018’s “Threshold: Emergency Responders on the U.S.-Mexico Border,” and 2024’s “Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence Across the Border,” in which she explores the politics of migration and weapons trafficking.
In order to thoroughly research and explore the topics within each book, Jusionyte moved to the U.S.-Mexico border, embedding herself with first responders, which tapped into her expertise as a trained paramedic. She split her time between the U.S. and Mexico, volunteering at a migrant shelter in Mexico and working with Arizona’s Nogales Suburban Fire District.
“That experience really allowed me to peel back these layers of politics and ideology that we tend to use to think about the border,” Jusionyte said. “It’s way more complicated when you are hanging out with people who don’t care about politics, who don’t care about ideology; they just care about helping people, no matter where these people are coming [from], what their criminal background is. It’s about saving lives and the environment.”
While researching “Exit Wounds,” Jusionyte discovered that the majority of guns used in Mexican killings were acquired in the United States and smuggled across the border.
“Over 70, and closer to 80 — that’s 80% – of all guns recovered in crime scenes in Mexico are sold in the United States,” Jusionyte said. “They come from stores, primarily in Texas and Arizona, but also from up here in Massachusetts.”
Now that she’s received the MacArthur Foundation’s $800,000 grant, Jusionyte plans on diving deeper into the links between the United States and violent crimes in Mexico, this time focusing on the “secretive, politicized” role of extraditions in immunity rates.
“We are extraditing a lot of organized crime leaders from Mexico, so these members and heads of various [cartels], we put them in prison in the United States for drug trafficking charges,” said Jusionyte. “But the crimes in Mexico — homicides, kidnappings, disappearances — are never investigated. It’s because all of those leaders are in the U.S.”
She also plans on vacationing with her parents. After all, for Jusionyte, who describes cultural anthropology as “deep hanging out,” crossing borders represents a chance to discover different food, religions and cultures, and to see “the full picture.”
And even with a MacArthur fellowship to her name, she remains as curious as ever — and just as humble about how she got here.
“I feel I still need to grow into this role and learn how to use the platform that I now have,” Jusionyte said. “But I do want to be a role model… in a way that I didn’t have a plan of how to get where I am. I just followed my interests and had a lot of good luck and a lot of support from mentors and friends and my family.”
Guest
- Ieva Jusionyte, professor of international security and anthropology at Brown University, member of the 2025 MacArthur “Genius” Fellows.
