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Joe Quick is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research explores contemporary faces of indigenous experience in the Americas. His work has led him to study the institutions of indigenous civil society in Ecuador, the labor migration of Kichwa people from Ecuador to the United States, and the use of social media by young Kichwa creators from Ecuador and young Mapuche creators from Argentina and Chile.

Joe’s primary research site has been the Green Lake Quilotoa Community Tourism Center in the central highlands of Ecuador, where he has conducted ethnographic research since 2012. Like other institutions of indigenous civil society in Ecuador, the CTC Quilotoa (as it is known by its abbreviated Spanish name) is engaged in a generations-long collective effort to overcome the political and economic conditions responsible for rural poverty and substantial out-migration from Kichwa communities. Its leaders focus their efforts on local projects to reinvent Kichwa livelihoods by building and managing local infrastructure, and they were largely successful in their efforts until the dramatic decrease in international tourism caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, many young Quilotoans have found it necessary to leave their community in search of wage labor. Like many in the generations that came of age before tourism, some of the young people who have experienced tourism's collapse initially sought work opportunities in Ecuador’s urban construction sector or in vegetable export businesses, but many of them soon found it necessary to travel abroad in search of wage labor. Thus, Joe’s newest research seeks to make sense of migrant experiences in a small but growing Kichwa community in the Chicago area. He is working with two generations of artists living in Quilotoa and Chicago to create a graphic ethnography using the artists’ paintings to communicate their experiences of labor migration before the rise of tourism in Quilotoa and after its downfall.

In the meantime, Joe has been part of a research project based at the University of Manchester exploring on the use of new media by indigenous youth in Latin America. although the project is focused on Kichwa media makers from Ecuador and Mapuche media makers from Argentina and Chile, Joe's in-person and digital ethnography has brought him into contact with young indigenous creators from all over the region. While some indigenous influencers are mainly focused on sponsored promotions or humorous sketches, many of the musicians and activists who have participated in the project are engaged in producing new digitally mediated spaces of indigenous identity that cross cultural and national boundaries. Joe’s research has been focused on understanding the social organization and cultural significance of those spaces.