Her interest in researching borders stems, in part, from her experience growing up in Lithuania, a former Soviet Socialist Republic with a complicated history of statehood that includes periods of expansion and occupation that lasted until its independence was restored in 1990.  

“Coming from a very small country whose borders have shifted dramatically, I never took borders for granted,” Jusionyte said. “They have always fascinated me as these artificial constructions but also extremely symbolically powerful things that people live and die for.” 

Her second book, “Threshold: Emergency Responders on the U.S.-Mexico Border,” documents the experiences of emergency responders working on both sides of the border wall that separates Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Mexico. A certified emergency medical technician and paramedic, Jusionyte embedded as a volunteer emergency responder as she researched the complex ethical and legal challenges facing the area’s paramedics and firefighters. 

In 2024, she published “Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence Across the Border,” which explores how the large volume of firearms that flow south from the U.S. to Mexico fuel homicide rates.

“I’ve always been interested in this cycle of violence between the United States and Mexico, and how we, through our policies, often make it worse, and what we can learn from the lived experiences of people who are most directly affected by border security policies,” said Jusionyte, who teaches anthropology courses at Brown on topics including ethnographic research methods.  

Her current research project is a natural progression from her last book’s focus on gun trafficking, she said. 

“What happens to the leaders of these major organized crime groups that we call cartels?” she said. “I realized that a lot of them were sitting in prisons in the United States, and their crimes in Mexico remain uninvestigated. This led me to this broader question: Can justice be exported from Mexico to the United States?” 

Jusionyte is just beginning research on that question, which she said will likely take her several years to complete. Currently, three Brown students are supporting the project, helping to create a database of the thousands of people who have been extradited from Mexico and other Latin American countries to the U.S.

She has been so immersed in her work — which involves following ongoing legal cases, attending court hearings and interviewing people who are incarcerated — that when she first received a call from the MacArthur Foundation, she didn’t pick up the phone. Recipients, who are nominated anonymously by leaders in their respective fields and considered by an anonymous selection committee, learn of their grants only when they receive a call from the MacArthur Foundation just before the public announcement, according to the foundation. 

Once Jusionyte found out about her award, she went through various stages of emotion, ranging from shock and disbelief to excitement, she said. 

“After I got the call, I took a very long walk,” she said. “I was thinking about how grateful I am to have always had so many mentors and colleagues supporting me with the often-quite-unconventional choices I’ve made throughout my research career.”