Manuela 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 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, then received the International Studies Association’s 2024 Outstanding Activist Scholar Award. She coordinated the electoral campaigns of presidential candidate Yaku Pérez Guartambel, a Kichwa water defender, in Ecuador.