Kay Barbara Warren (born 1947)[1] is an American academic anthropologist, known for her extensive research and publications in cultural anthropology studies.
Initially trained as an anthropologist specializing in field studies of Latin American and Mesoamerican indigenous cultures, Warren has also written and lectured on an array of broader anthropological topics.
As of 2009[update] Warren holds an endowed chair as the Charles C. Tillinghast Jr. ’32 Professor in International Studies at Brown University,.
Warren returned to Guatemala to update and continue her research in this area in 1989, and throughout the 1990s she spent a succession of annual field seasons among rural and urban highland Maya communities.
Much of the research was carried out in collaboration with Susan Bourque, a politics and government academic from Smith College, with whom she co-authored Women of the Andes: Patriarchy and Social Change in Rural Peru, an ethnographic book that won several awards.