Miki Makihara is a linguistic anthropologist in the Department of Anthropology at Queens College and the Ph.D. Programs in Anthropology, Linguistics, and Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures (LAILaC) at The Graduate Center, The City University of New York (CUNY). In addition, she is the Subfield Coordinator for Linguistic Anthropology in Anthropology Program at The Graduate Center.

She studies communication and society, and is interested in understanding the ways in which interaction contributes to maintaining and transforming community and inequality. Her research combines ethnography and discourse analysis. She has been engaged in long-term research on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and written about its sociolinguistic situation, multilingualism, and Indigenous and ethnic identity formation, language ideologies, and language reclamation and revitalization. She is currently working on politics of stance-taking and social change.

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Her publications include: Consequences of Contact: Language Ideologies and Sociocultural Transformations in Pacific Societies (co-edited with Bambi Schieffelin, Oxford University Press), “Linguistic Syncretism and Language Ideologies: Transforming Sociolinguistic Hierarchy on Rapa Nui” (American Anthropologist), “Postura, poder y política” (‘Stance, Power, and Politics’ Anuario de Glotopolítica), and other articles in journals such as Language in Society, Language & Communication, Annual Review of Anthropology, Anthropological Theory, Oceanic Linguistics, and Oxford Bibliographies in Anthropology.