Claudia Strauss is the Jean M. Pitzer Professor of Anthropology at Pitzer College. She studies personal and cultural meanings of work policies, immigration, government social welfare programs, and other social issues.  She is widely cited as a theorist of the way people mentally represent and express conflicting cultural messages.  In 2025 she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Psychological Anthropology.

 

“Strauss has always been, at her heart, concerned with bringing the tools and theories of cognitive anthropology to bear on pressing political and political economic questions... one of the preeminent voices in cognitive anthropology.” 

--Professor Jack Friedman, Ethos