Pegi Vail is an anthropologist (PhD 2004, NYU), filmmaker, and curator at New York University’s Center for Media, Culture and History, teaches documentary filmmaking in NYU’s Culture & Media Program, as well as courses in the Anthropology Department at the NYC campus and at NYU Prague. Her award-winning documentary Gringo Trails looks at the long term cultural and environmental effects of travel and tourism. The film has been broadcast and released theatrically in the USA and internationally. She is a former Fulbright scholar who has lectured on travel study tours with National Geographic and Smithsonian, and is a seasoned international lecturer on visual anthropology and the anthropology of tourism. As a curator, she has collaborated with colleagues at NYC arts and cultural institutions such as the Margaret Mead Film Festival at the American Museum of Natural History, National Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and through organizations such as the The Moth, the storytelling collective she was a founding member, curator, and storyteller for, serving on its original board of directors. Vail has served as a judge for the International Documentary Association Awards, National Geographic World Legacy Awards, and the World Travel Tourism Council’s Tourism for Tomorrow Awards. She was the cultural consultant and APP co-writer for Felix & Paul Studios’ “Nomads” virtual reality (VR) series, winner of the Best Immersive Experience at the 5th Canadian Screen Awards. Her current documentaries in progress include serving as a producer on Shadow of Nanook, a Ford JustFilms grant recipient, and as director/producer on, They Measured Our Heads.
Recent work:
“The Skulls of Inishbofin“, Irish Echo
The Long Journey Home, blog, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures
“Introduction: World Fairs, Exhibitions and Anthropology” Revisiting Contexts of Post-colonialism in Anthropological Journal of European Cultures
Recent press: Trinity College Dublin considers returning Inishbofin skulls, in The Guardian
New podcasts: The Moth 25 Years of Stories: All the Way Back & Deviate: An Anthropology of Travel Culture with Rolf Potts