Zoe Caroline Brettell (née Bieler; born June 11, 1950[1]) is a Canadian cultural anthropologist known for her scholarship on migration and gender.
Brettell's ethnographic research in Portugal and Texas is notable for centering the gendered, lived experiences of migrants.
[6][7] Brettell received a Bachelor of Arts in Latin American studies from Yale University in 1971.
In 1976, her husband, art historian Rick Brettell, was hired at the University of Texas, and the two moved to Austin.
She completed her dissertation, Hope and Nostalgia: The Migration of Portuguese Women to Paris, and received her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Brown University in 1978.