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Frederika Kaestle
Bioanthropology
North America - California, Turkey, Kazakhstan, South Africa, New Guinea
I have concentrated on the new techniques and protocols that make ancient DNA available for study, and have used these data to test hypotheses based on archaeological, linguistic, and ethnographic studies.
Laura Scheiber
Archaeology
North America - Great Plains
In my research, I address long-term social dynamics on the North American Plains by considering culture contact and colonialism, household production, and micro-scale daily activities. My specialty is the identification and analysis of large mammal bones, particularly bison.
Raymond J. DeMallie
Social-cultural Anthropology
North America - Plains
The topical areas of my studies include kinship and social organization, ritual and belief systems, oral traditions, and material culture; the methods of my studies include ethnohistory, linguistic and textual analysis, and symbolism.
Douglas R. Parks
Linguistic Anthropology
North America - Great Plains
The ultimate goal of my work is to contribute to the reconstruction of American Indian culture history generally, but the focus of it is the study of the languages of the Great Plains, particularly the Caddoan and Siouan peoples.
Susan Alt
Archaeology
North America - Midwest
I am an archaeologist studying Mississippian societies with a particular focus on the central Mississippi and lower Ohio valleys. My research is centered on the reconstruction of the histories of past peoples and places, utilizing social theory to understand those histories.
Philip S. LeSourd
Linguistic Anthropology
North America - North East
My research focuses primarily on issues in the structure of languages of the Algonquian family, the most widespread linguistic stock in North America. My specialty within this domain is Maliseet-Passamaquoddy, an Eastern Algonquian language spoken in New Brunswick (Maliseet) and Maine (Passamaquoddy).
Richard Bauman
Social-cultural Anthropology
Mexico
Best known for his theoretical and methodological contributions to the ethnographic study of language and performance, Bauman's scholarship has had an impact on the development of a number of intersecting fields of study, including folklore, anthropology, history, linguistics, semiotics, and speech communication.
Stacie King
Archaeology
Mexico, Oaxaca
My research focuses on the peoples of Oaxaca, Mexico between 1500 B.C. to the present. I am particularly interested in how people in the past negotiated their place in the social, political, and economic world around them.
Anya Peterson Royce
Social-cultural Anthropology
Mexico, Oaxaca
Royce's research has centered on three areas: the anthropology of dance and performing arts, cultural and ethnic identity, and the ethnography of Mexico, with particular focus on the Isthmus Zapotec.
Daniel Suslak
Linguistic Anthropology
Mesoamerica
Mixe-Zoquean languages and cultures, linguistic change and language shift, language politics in Mexico.
Catherine M. Tucker
Social-cultural Anthropology
Mexico, Oaxaca
Honduras, Guatemala
Understanding interrelationships between humans and the environment, and exploring possible paths toward greater social and environmental sustainability, constitute my central research interests.
Richard Wilk
Social-cultural Anthropology
Caribbean, Belize
I am passionately interested in social theory as a means of making connections between fields and problems at different scales, making sense of applied problems and public issues, and informing research design and methodology.
Anne Pyburn
Archaeology
Caribbean, Belize, Kyrgyzstan
Most of my primary research has taken place in Belize, where I have directed major excavations and general mapping and reconnaissance in the remains of three ancient Maya cities. The focus of my research in Belize has been on understanding and reconstructing very large systems of human organization that developed before the modern world system.
Geoffrey W. Conrad
Archaeology
Caribbean, Dominican Republic
In 1997, after more than a quarter-century of work devoted to Central Andean cultures, I began excavating in the Dominican Republic on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (also known as Santo Domingo). I am studying the development of the Taíno chiefdoms encountered by Christopher Columbus and the early Spanish explorers of the Caribbean.
Eduardo S. Brondizio
Social-cultural Anthropology
Amazon, Brazil
I am motivated by the study of rural populations and small farmers in Brazil and Latin America, their ways of life and livelihoods, their social and economic identities, and their importance to the larger society.
Emilio F. Moran
Social-cultural Anthropology
Latin America, Brazil
Professor Moran is an expert in the field of environmental anthropology, tropical ecology, and the human dimensions of global environmental change. He has contributed to the development of theory in cultural ecology and ecosystem ecology. These theories form the underpinning for our understanding of how the human species perceives and interacts with its physical environment.
L. Shane Greene
Social-cultural Anthropology
Latin America, Peru
My research interests lie at the intersection of urban subcultures, ethnicity, environment, and the politics of culture in the Latin American context. While I have conducted research in multiple different contexts and on diverse topics there exists an underlying interest in movements for social justice and political transformation.
April K. Sievert
Archaeology
Peru
I am particularly interested in the interface between ceremonial behavior and craft industries. I have been researching how people in different cultural situations use lithic tools to manufacture other tools and objects.
Virginia Vitzthum
Bioanthropology
Bolivia
An evolutionary biologist, Dr. Vitzthum’s work of the past 20 years has focused on the determinants of variation in human female reproductive functioning. During the mid-90s at the Bolivian Institute for High Altitude Biology, Vitzthum directed Project REPA, a longitudinal study of hormonal variation in highland Bolivian women.
Joelle Bahloul
Social-cultural Anthropology
France
My research is a comparative ethnographic exploration of the process of migration and its result in the diasporic experience. I have ethnographically focused on Jewish cultures in the "new" Europe, half a century after the Holocaust.
Sarah D. Phillips
Social-cultural Anthropology
Ukraine
I have been conducting anthropological research in Ukraine since 1995. My broad research interests have been to track the variable effects of socialist collapse on people’s lives, especially in terms of gender formations, health, social inequalities and social justice, and changing citizen-state relations.
Frances Trix
Linguistic Anthropology
Albania, Kosova, Turkey
I have studied language in Muslim communities, often vulnerable ones--including immigrant communities, Balkan Muslim communities, and those in conflict situations. I have also studied language in professional institutions.
Brian Gilley
Social-cultural Anthropology
Native North America, Contemporary Italy and Belgium
Dr. Gilley’s research engages the logic of late liberalism with a focus on the relationship between ‘tradition,’ power, and cultural practice.
Della Collins Cook
Bioanthropology
Aegean
My work in skeletal biology applies insights drawn from health studies of modern humans to the study of ancient peoples. I am particularly interested in the infectious diseases that affect the skeleton and in developmental defects in the teeth.
M. Nazif Shahrani
Social-cultural Anthropology
Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, Tajikistan
Two facts have shaped my career as a "native" anthropologist. My personal conviction, formed in the mid-1960's as a college student in Afghanistan, that anthropology was a discipline relevant to the future development of countries such as my own homeland. Read more »
Beth Buggenhagen
Social-cultural Anthropology
Senegal
My research analyzes the politics of social production and value, material culture, visuality, gender, Islam, and globalization. These interests have emerged from my fieldwork in Senegal and with Senegalese migrants in New York City and Chicago. My fieldwork in Senegal from 1999-2000 resulted in the book, Muslim Families in Global Senegal (IU Press 2011).
Gracia Clark
Social-cultural Anthropology
Ghana
Gracia Clark, a 2010 IDAH fellow, seeks to recreate the fieldwork experience by structuring the original materials interactively so that the visitors’ questions shape what they learn. Her project is titled, "Virtual Kumasi Central Market."
Beverly Stoeltje
Social-cultural Anthropology
Ghana
I define my interest as the intersection of nationalism and symbolic forms. Understanding the fundamentals of social movements that are recognized as cultural nationalism or national identities and the symbolic forms such as narrative, law, film, literature, song and ritual genres that are associated with them, is the goal of much of my work as well as that of a course I teach called, "Performing Nationalism."
Paula Girshick
Social-cultural Anthropology
Nigeria, South Africa
After working for a number of years in the Benin Kingdom , Nigeria on the history and political role of royal art, I have recently begun research in South Africa. I am currently involved in two projects: the first deals with post-apartheid monuments and national identity and the second focuses on the history of the South African market in "traditional" African art.
Kevin D. Hunt
Bioanthropology
Uganda
In my research I use what I learn from chimpanzee locomotion, posture and ecology to better understand what led humans to diverge from apes, in particular, what advantage bipedalism gave our chimpanzee-like ancestors some 5 million years ago.
Jeanne Sept
Archaeology
Africa
I have been working with students to explore the potential of Agent Based Modeling to help evaluate hypotheses about proto-human diet and subsistence. We have created an ABM called HOMINIDS: Hungry Omnivores Moving, Interacting and Nesting in Independent Decision-making Simulations.
Nicholas Toth
Archaeology
Africa
Experimental archaeological research into the stone tool-making and tool-using behaviors of modern African apes; Experimental archaeological research into the manufacture and use of early Palaeolithic tools.
Kathy Schick
Archaeology
Africa
Old World prehistory, palaeoanthropology, archaeological site formation, geoarchaeology, taphonomy, zooarchaeology, hunter-gatherers, ethnoarchaeology, lithic technology, experimental archaeology, primate studies, invention and technology, history of archaeology.
Michael P. Muehlenbein
Bioanthropology
Borneo
My research interests are focused primarily on various aspects of the biology and ecology of infectious diseases, including the human and non-human primate physiological adaptations to these diseases as well as the impact of environmental change on zoonotic disease transmission potential, specifically between human and non-human primate populations.
Andrea Wiley
Bioanthropology
India
I originally became interested in anthropology as an undergraduate when I discovered that the discipline would afford me a unique opportunity to merge my interests in the social and biological sciences. Hence my approach to anthropological questions is distinctly biocultural – I am interested in how biology affects culture, how culturally patterned behavior affects biology, and how these forces interact over time.
Sara Friedman
Social-cultural Anthropology
China, Taiwan
My research to date has examined the connections between large-scale political processes and intimate life, with particular attention to the place of state power and citizenship in gender identities, intimate relationships, and bodily practices of dress, labor, and sexuality.
Ling-yu Hung
Archaeology
China, Taiwan
Topical Interests: Chinese archaeology, prehistory of Taiwan, craft specialization, ceramics, ritual practice, cultural interaction, geoarchaeology, and the application of GIS in archaeology.
Marvin D. Sterling
Social-cultural Anthropology
Japan
My research centers on the popularity of a range of Jamaican cultural forms in Japan, mainly roots reggae, dancehall reggae, and Rastafari. I approach this research from several theoretical perspectives. I use performance studies, for instance, to ethnographically explore the issues of social power—particularly those surrounding life in recessionary Japan.
Image reproduced from the GEBCO world map, http://www.gebco.net/
