Ieva Jusionyte

Ieva Jusionyte is an anthropologist and associate professor at Brown University interested in the roles of law and violence in contemporary states. After growing up in Soviet-occupied Lithuania, she moved to the United States and has spent more than a decade in the field researching the borderlands of Latin America. She has written three books, including the award-winning ethnography THRESHOLD: Emergency Responders on the US-Mexico Border. Her academic work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and The Guardian, and she's been a guest on NPR and BBC. Jusionyte is also a certified EMT-paramedic who has treated migrants injured on the US-Mexico border as well as Americans wounded by firearms in cities along the East Coast. Curious about the causes of gun violence, she spent five years tracing the movement of guns — from firearms dealers to smugglers, from gun ranges to ambulances, from courtrooms to jails. She trained in martial arts to protect herself and learned to live with and around guns. Her new book, EXIT WOUNDS: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence Across the Border, is a gripping, intimate look inside the world of firearms trafficking that upturns the familiar story about smuggling and migration on US southern border.