Margarita (Maggie) Hernandez
Margarita (Maggie) Hernandez is a National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the Dartmouth College. Maggie’s research seeks to understand the connection between genetics, lived experiences, how those lived experiences are embodied, and if/how they influence health trajectories within Latinx populations living in the United States. Additionally, Maggie’s work seeks to dispel the myth that all Latinx people are the same by investigating the richness of our individual ancestries, lived experiences, and cultures.
For her dissertation work, Maggie investigated if ancestry, histories of immigration, experiences of discrimination, and sociopolitics are associated with adverse health outcomes within individuals of Cuban descent. For her post-doctoral project, Maggie is working with recently-arrived Cuban refugees to investigate if immigration trajectory is associated with adverse mental health outcomes and increased biological aging. Maggie is a first generation Cuban-American, born to Cuban immigrant parents and grandparents. Working within their community in South Florida, Maggie hopes to use her research in service of her community to advocate and fight for social changes that benefit all historically oppressed and disenfranchised groups.