Christopher Bloechl is a linguistic and sociocultural anthropologist whose research investigates semiotics and politics of Indigenous language advocacy in Latin America. He has undertaken ethnographic and linguistic fieldwork among Yucatec Maya speakers in the Yucatán Peninsula and among K’iche’ Maya speakers in highland Guatemala. His current book project explores the interface between professional Yucatec Maya language advocates and everyday speakers of the language by way of media practices. Based on approximately two years of cumulative field research in southern Yucatán, Mexico, the work examines the utilization and effects of mass media as instruments for ethnolinguistic mobilization and language standardization. His second project focuses on private ecotourism ventures in the Mexican Yucatán that formulate Maya language, culture, and identity as commercial products.

Bloechl holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. He previously taught at DePaul University and served as a Digital Project Fellow for the Mesoamerican Language Collection at the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library. In the 2024–25 academic year, Bloechl will teach courses in the Anthropology Department and in the Self, Culture, and Society course sequence of the Social Sciences Core.