Pilar Zazueta is a historian. Her research focuses on how food and nutrition became a public policy issue in Mexico during the twentieth century. Pilar has a B.A. in International Relations from El Colegio de México and a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University. Pilar has also worked for an interdisciplinary team headed by Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and singer and philanthropist Shakira to expand and improve early-childhood development programs in Latin America. Pilar has worked on two grants of the Canadian Institutes of Health, one for implementing programs to improve health services for pregnant and early parenting women who use substances and the other to create a survey about gender, violence and health in the Canadian sex industry. In 2017 Pilar co-organized the Lozano Long Conference "New Perspectives on the Contemporary Food System in Latin America."

At LLILAS she teaches courses on research methods, the food system, gender, and contemporary Mexico.