Amy Zaharlick is an associate professor emerita in the Department of Anthropology at Ohio State. She is a cultural and linguistic anthropologist who has conducted research with Native Americans in the US Southwest and with Southeast Asian refugees in the Midwest. Before coming to Ohio State, she served as director of the Native American Teacher Education Program and as Associate Director of the Multicultural Education Program at the University of Albuquerque in New Mexico.

While at the University of Albuquerque, she developed and taught courses on Native American bilingual education, advocated for Native American bilingual education on the national,state, and local levels, served as a consultant for Indian bilingual education programs,and helped tribes develop orthographies for their native languages. She continues to assist tribes and has published some of the results of her work in regional and national journals.

Since coming to Ohio State, her work and publications have focused on Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese refugees in the areas of health and mental health. She teaches courses on American Indians, language and culture, and ethnographic research, among others. In 2000, she received a Masters in Social Work at Ohio State and has worked as a clinical social worker in mental health settings. Her latest research involves the effects of meditation on mental health disorders.