Associate Professor
she/her
Ana Villarreal is Associate Professor of Sociology at Boston University. Her research draws on ethnography and social theory to advance sociological understandings of violence, emotions, urban dynamics, and their aggravating impact on socio-spatial divides in Latin America.
Her first book The Two Faces of Fear: Violence and Inequality in the Mexican Metropolis (Oxford University Press, 2024) draws on two years of qualitative fieldwork conducted during a major turf war in Monterrey, Mexico to trace the far-reaching impact of fear and violence on social ties, daily practices, and everyday spaces. The book brings two seemingly contradictory faces of fear into focus—its ability to both isolate and concentrate people and resources, deepening inequality. The book won the 2025 Outstanding Book Award from the ASA Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section and the 2025 Edwin H. Sutherland Book Award from the SSSP Law and Society Division. The Two Faces of Fear was written with college students in mind. Oxford Higher Ed recommends its use in macro sociology courses on urban sociology and crime.
More broadly, Villarreal’s research agenda investigates social responses to violence in three interrelated arenas: everyday speech, daily practices, and urban structures. In Sociological Theory (2021), she conceptualizes coping codes or labels people use to minimize, protect, and collectively make sense of a new threat (for a podcast feature, listen here). In Fear and Spectacular Drug Violence in Monterrey (2015) and Emotions and Society (2022), she conceptualizes the logistics of fear or the strategies people employ to bind fear on an everyday basis. In City & Community (2021), she extends research on fear and urban life beyond the well-established literature on gated communities to consider how fear can fragment urban space while concentrating urban wealth at a municipal level. Taken together, her findings reveal layers of deep societal transformation in the face of large-scale eruptions of violence as have become recurrent in urban Latin America. The Emotions and Society article won the 2023 Outstanding Contribution Award from the ASA Sociology of Emotions Section.
Professor Villarreal teaches graduate and undergraduate sociological theory, seminars on urban inequality, and qualitative methods. Central to her pedagogy is making theory relevant and relatable. In 2025, she was honored with the Gitner Award for Distinguished Teaching. Villarreal is a longtime mentor of the BU Undergraduate Sociological Association and a member of the BU Initiative on Cities Faculty Advisory Board. Beyond BU, she holds elected positions in the ASA urban and culture sections and serves on the editorial board of City & Community.
**Professor Villarreal is on sabbatical for the 2025-2026 academic year at Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.