Nicole Sault is a cultural anthropologist whose research has focused on kinship and gender among the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. Her major fieldwork is with the Zapotec of Oaxaca, in southeastern Mexico. More recently, she has been doing research on the symbolic attributes of birds among indigenous cultures of the Americas. In Costa Rica, Peru, and California, she has been studying the ethno-ornithology of condors, vultures, macaws, and hummingbirds. Through their beliefs and practices about birds, each of these societies teaches us about relationship to the world and our obligations for reciprocity.

While studying Zapotec rites of passage and other rituals, such as the use of incense and the sweathouse (temazcal), she became increasingly interested in how different cultures conceptualize the human body. In Many Mirrors: Body Image and Social Relations (Rutgers University Press, 1994), she examines the history of the fragmentation of the body into parts, as well as the relationship between body image and parenthood in Mexico and the United States.

Her interest in body image and whole persons eventually led her to investigate the meaning of cosmetic surgery and breast implants, as well as the politics of food in relation to body image, globalization, and sustainable agriculture in Mexico, Costa Rica, and the U.S.A.

 She is fluent in English and Spanish, as well as conversant in Zapotec.

She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California at Los Angeles and her B.A. from the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she graduated cum laude in Anthropology and English, and Phi Beta Kappa. She is proud to be a recipient of the Sisterhood is Powerful award from the Women’s Studies Program at Santa Clara University and a recipient of a Fulbright-Hayes Doctoral Research Scholarship.