Dr Vessuri is an Argentine-born Venezuelan anthropologist. She received a Dip.Anthr, B.Litt. and D. Phil. from Oxford University.
She is a Senior Researcher and Head of the Department of Science Studies at the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research (IVIC) ; former Vice President of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) ; and currently a member of the Council of the United Nations University in Tokyo and chair of the Latin American
scientific committee of the UNESCO Forum on Higher Education, Research and Knowledge.
Dr Vessuri is a pioneer sociologist of science in Latin America. She has an interest in environmental anthropology and in knowledge systems. Among her works are "The institutionalization process" in J.J. Salomon, F. Sagasti & C. Sachs- Jeantet (eds) The Uncertain Quest. Science, Technology, and Development (UNU Press, Tokyo, 1994), "Science in Latin America" in J. Krige & D. Pestre (eds.) Science in the Twentieth Century (Harwood Press, 1997), "Science in the South for the South. Exploring the Role of Local Leadership as a Catalyst of Scientific Development,", in T. Shinn, J. Spaapen & V. Krishna (eds), Science and Technology in a Developing World, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook 1995 (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), and “History of Science and Policy Implications in a Developing Country Setting” in K. Grandin, N. Wormbs and S. Widmalm (eds) The Science- Industry Nexus. History, Policy, Implications (Nobel Symposium 123, 2004). In 2001 she was guest editor of the special issue "Science and its Cultures" of the International Social Science Journal.