Elix Colón is a Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology at Stanford University. She completed a year and a half of ethnographic fieldwork in Havana and Miami, where she was a visiting scholar at both the Instituto de Historia in Cuba and the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University. Her research looks at how older adult Cubans have renegotiated their understanding of kin relations in the wake of an impending demographic and social crisis. Elix analyzes life history narratives to understand how older adult Cubans themselves have implemented networks enabling informal and formal practices of mutual care and self-care. Her work explores how the socialist state has sought to relieve the economic burden of aging. In illuminating these issues, she engages with anthropological studies on aging, kinship, as well as state socialism while also exploring the tensions between patterns of aging and citizens’ relationship with the state.Before coming to Stanford, she earned her B.A. in American Studies and History from Rutgers University and has since worked as a research assistant and as an educator in Spain through the Fulbright Program.