Sara AilshireEntry into program: 2013
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What sparked your interest in Anthropology/Archaeology? In undergrad I took medical anthropology as an elective to fulfill a graduation requirement. After a few weeks in the class I found I liked it so much I ended up changing my major to anthropology.
What are your research interests? Critical medical anthropology, childbirth, reproduction, human rights, legal anthropology.
Where will you/are you conducting your fieldwork? Delhi, Kochi, and Jaipur, India.
What do you find most interesting about your field work location? It would be hard to pick just one thing I find the most interesting about where I do research!
What is your most memorable experience thus far in the field? When I lived in Jaipur a group of macaques broke into my apartment, got into my fridge, and made a huge mess. They must love butter because they smeared it all over my kitchen floor.
What do you do in your “downtime?” Tell us something interesting about yourself! I like to knit, cook, garden, and I’m learning how to quilt. I also am really involved in our graduate employee union. |
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Megan AlexanderEntry into program: 2016
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What sparked your interest in Anthropology/Archaeology?? My original interest in anthropology was sparked by my deep love of museums! I wanted to pursue degrees that would lead to becoming a curator. I took history and art history courses along with anthropology. However, after graduation my interests shifted, and when I ultimately decided to return to school for my graduate degree I had a renewed interest in anthropology that led me down my current medical anthropology path.
What are your research interests? My research interests include death and dying, end-of-life, care and caregiving, biomedicine, and alternative forms of care.
Where will you/are you conducting your fieldwork? My research focus is in the United States. My fieldwork is a bit less traditional, being conducted mostly online, but still uses tried and true anthropological methods.
What do you find most interesting about your field work location? The most interesting thing about my fieldwork “location” is the enthusiasm and interest of people to participate despite the fact we may never meet in person.
What is your most memorable experience thus far in the field? I just started data collection, so I’ll have to revisit this question once I’ve had more time in the “field.”
What do you do in your “downtime?” Tell us something interesting about yourself! In my down time I cook with my sister and take care of a large (currently winter) garden with my husband. We don’t harvest as much in the winter, but it’s still fun to see the radishes and lettuce mature despite the cold! |
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Sam ArcherEntry into program: 2018 |
What sparked your interest in Anthropology/Archaeology?? In the summer of 2010, I had an internship at an Austin, TX-based community archive called the Texas After Violence Project. They collect oral histories of how individuals and their families have been impacted by state-sanctioned violence in Texas. My time spent with this organization completely pivoted my academic trajectory. At the time, I was a Theatre & Dance major at the University of Texas at Austin but was seriously considering switching majors to something like history. My experiences at TAVP inspired me to look into anthropology, and that following fall, I took a linguistic anthropology class to confirm my interest. I changed my major to anthropology that semester.
What are your research interests? critical biocultural anthropology, anthropological genetics, paleogenomics, archaeological theory and method, science and technology studies, critical feminist, queer, Black, and Indigenous theory
Where will you/are you conducting your fieldwork? My dissertation focuses on two 19th-century archaeological sites in Houston and Austin, Texas. The majority of my research is lab-based, but I visit Texas for archival and community-based work.
What do you find most interesting about your field work location? I think it is of the utmost importance for us to tell Texas history as critically and robustly as possible. Schoolchildren in Texas take Texas history multiple times – I took it in the fourth and seventh grades – but Texas history books tend to reinforce a very particular narrative about how Texas came to be. Through my dissertation work, I aim to tell the lesser-known histories of Black, brown, poor, and other marginalized peoples and their experiences with state-sanctioned violence in 19th century Texas.
What is your most memorable experience thus far in the field? As an ancient DNA researcher, most of my research is conducted in the lab. I suppose, in an autoethnographic sense, my experiences in “the field” could be considered my first 27 years of life as someone born and raised in Texas. But I’m not sure I have enough space here to tell those kinds of memories!
What do you do in your “downtime?” Tell us something interesting about yourself! I spend a lot of time hiking with my dog all around New England. A goal of mine is to do 100+ Connecticut hikes before I graduate. Along the way, I’ve picked up an interest in antiquing and learning lesser-known histories of New England towns and villages. I’ve also recently picked up linoleum carving, or linocutting, as a medium of printmaking. I consume hours of podcast content on the daily and have a deep and complicated love for the Bachelor and all of its subsequent iterations.
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Krista Dotzel |
What sparked your interest in Anthropology/Archaeology?? I went on a family trip to Ireland in high school and got to visit Neolithic tombs. I hadn’t really thought about archaeology much before that time.
What are your research interests? I use phytolith and macrobotanical analyses to look at people-plant interactions in pre-Contact Southern New England, particularly with respect to maize, beans, and squash.
Where will you/are you conducting your fieldwork? Southern New England.
What do you find most interesting about your field work location? I like that I am local to the area and can find people interested in my research anywhere in my daily life. I am also interested in the fact that the communities in the area had very heterogenous practices over a relatively small region. People were making very different decisions within a fairly small area. I also see evidence of very early maize use in certain parts of the region and evidence that the ways people used maize across the region changed over time.
What is your most memorable experience thus far in the field? I accidentally got too close to the chicks of a wild turkey while carrying some excavation equipment in the forest. The mother turkey charged after me and I dropped all my equipment to flee the scene. Wild turkeys are big!
What do you do in your “downtime?” Tell us something interesting about yourself! I like to knit and have been practicing Hapkido, a Korean martial art for the past few years.
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Johan JarlEntry into program: 2016 |
What sparked your interest in Anthropology/Archaeology? The television show “Time Team”.
What are your research interests? Archaeobotany
Where will you/are you conducting your fieldwork? The Southern Caucasus
What do you find most interesting about your field work location? It’s a geographical bridge between two large bodies of water, where we know hominins passed through, and occupied, throughout the early Paleolithic until today.
What is your most memorable experience thus far in the field? The hugely varied landscapes I get to traverse as I hunt for modern reference samples.
What do you do in your “downtime?” Tell us something interesting about yourself! I like to go fishing – with mixed success rates.
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What sparked your interest in Anthropology/Archaeology? I was always in love with the past. It took me a little time to move away from the idea that I had to go into programming or engineering, but the moment I did there wasn’t really any choice but something as hands on and fun as archaeology.
What are your research interests? Shipwreck Archaeology
What is your most memorable experience thus far in the field? I think my most memorable moment was when a local theater group came to the site and put on a whole play about life in Etruria. It was a lot of work to make sure they could do it safely and without damaging anything, but we ended up with almost two hundred people on site coming to enjoy the spectacle. |
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What sparked your interest in Anthropology/Archaeology? My interests in anthropology came to me through the recognition of my value for humanity. Archaeology allows me to value a past form of that humanity.
What are your research interests? I am currently interested in understanding the role(s) of ochre (or pigmented mineral rock) in the evolution of human behavior during the Middle-Later Pleistocene of eastern Africa.
Where will you/are you conducting your fieldwork? Region: Eastern Africa; Countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania
What do you find most interesting about your field work location? My fieldwork locations run from the northern to southern stretches of the East African Rift System (EARS).This geological system provides the foundations to expose past deposits across a vast landscape. It will provide the essential connection to a number of sites through space and time. It is also necessary for this type of comparative project to look at the evolution of human behavior as it relates to pigment usage.
What is your most memorable experience thus far in the field? My most memorable experience was still my very first field experience. The feeling was new, exciting, and life-changing.
What do you do in your “downtime?” Tell us something interesting about yourself! My favorite thing to do is connect with people of all different backgrounds and experience the many things life has to offer. I like to do everything with all kinds of people but prefer new and unique experiences.
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What sparked your interest in Anthropology/Archaeology? I was always interested in paleontology as a kid, and the first human evolution course I took in college reignited that interest. It took a little longer to come around on archaeology, but my first excavation in France really made me fall in love with it.
What are your research interests? Human evolution, The Middle and Upper Paleolithic in Eurasia, lithic technology, human behavior.
Where will you/are you conducting your fieldwork? Armenia and Georgia
What do you find most interesting about your field work location? What I find most interesting about the Southern Caucasus is how much there still is left to discover and learn about the prehistoric humans who lived in the mountainous region thousands of years ago. The location presents a great opportunity to study human behavior and evolution in an interesting and understudied environment.
What is your most memorable experience thus far in the field? My most memorable experience in the field was probably that first summer in France, just excavating and handling prehistoric artifacts for the first time. There was (and is) something special about holding a tool that some human made and used thousands of years ago. Getting to visit famous Paleolithic sites like Cro Magnon, Le Moustier, La Ferrassie was wonderful. What do you do in your “downtime?” Tell us something interesting about yourself! I am a huge hockey fan, so come 5pm during the season I almost always have a game on in the background. The pandemic has also (unfortunately?) made me a bigger video game person.
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What sparked your interest in Anthropology/Archaeology? When I was young, I read a book called “The Secrets of Vesuvius” written by Jane Bisel, Shelley Tanaka, and Laurie McGraw. The book had an extensive section on the skeletons found at Pompeii and Herculaneum and I remember being absolutely fascinated by how much the physical anthropologists could learn from them. The interest stuck with me, and now I too learn about ancient peoples’ lives from their physical remains.
What are your research interests? I use a combination of stable isotopes and ancient DNA in order to learn about how the introduction of agriculture influenced the function and composition of the oral microbiome.
Where will you/are you conducting your fieldwork? I hope to conduct fieldwork in Levant, although most of my time is currently spent in the lab.
What do you find most interesting about your field work location? The Levant was one of the earliest centers of agriculture, and some sites in the region show a very detailed record of the various experiments people applied when they first transitioned into a farming lifestyle.
What is your most memorable experience thus far in the field? In the summer of 2015, I worked with the Belize Archaeological Reconnaissance Project and visited Actun Tunichil Muknal cave. The cave has a plethora of intact Mayan artifacts as well as physical remains, but they can be difficult to access. I recall swimming through a deep pool of water just to get inside the cave, then climbing up slick limestone walls to reach the ritual areas. Perhaps my most memorable experience was walking in a pitch black chamber with water vapor creating a thick haze and seeing perfectly preserved artifacts everywhere I pointed my headlight.
What do you do in your “downtime?” Tell us something interesting about yourself! When I’m not doing archaeology, I make mead and read terrible science fiction books.
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What sparked your interest in Anthropology/Archaeology? I originally came to anthropology through ethnomusicology. I trained as a classical musician but went on to receive my MA in anthropology while studying in Ireland.
What are your research interests? Mysticism, cognition, music
Where will you/are you conducting your fieldwork? Istanbul, Turkey
What do you find most interesting about your field work location? Turkey is so culturally different from the USA that it is difficult to name any one thing. For one, I enjoy the challenge of conducting research in Turkish. I also have access to some highly reclusive religious groups that are quite unlike anything outside of a few scattered examples across a small number of countries. Istanbul is a city with so many amazing things on the surface, one would never guess how much more is behind the superficies.
What is your most memorable experience thus far in the field? Sufi dhikir is definitely my most memorable experience from the field. It is an intense discipline of ritual mysticism, and outsider participation is virtually unheard of. I would describe it, but its ineffability is very much the point!
What do you do in your “downtime?” Tell us something interesting about yourself! I spend my downtime playing various fiddle styles and Spanish guitar.
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What sparked your interest in Anthropology/Archaeology? Originally a Classicist, I was interested in archaeology and the mystery of missing gaps in history. I became more involved in the Anthropology department because I found that I was interested in the nuances of society and how people interact with one-another in different contexts. I love that within Anthropology I can explore various sub-disciplines that are of interest to me like science and technology, genealogy, medicine, forensics, and human-animal interaction.
What are your research interests? The anthropology of science and technology, legal anthropology, and human rights. Specifically, I look at the cultural aspects of algorithms and artificial intelligence.
Where will you/are you conducting your fieldwork? Silicon Valley/San Fransisco, CA
What do you do in your “downtime?” Tell us something interesting about yourself! In my downtime I like to ride my horse Roman who I have had for 16 years — we used to do show jumping internationally before I started at University. I also like to walk my black lab Coral, and listen to really bad romance audiobooks.
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What sparked your interest in Anthropology/Archaeology? I’ve wanted to be an archaeologist since I was 12 years old. I suspect my interest sprang from my love of both history and natural history. Growing up in south-central Pennsylvania, my dad would take me on weekend trips while my mom worked. We’d go explore the mountains outside of town, set up his tree stands in preparation for hunting season, search for fossils, drive over to Gettysburg battlefield, and we even went to a Native American pow-wow or two. I think that once I learned what archaeology was, the tangible nature of digging for artifacts appealed to me more than just reading old documents. So I think it probably makes sense that I became interested in archaeology and human ecology!
What are your research interests? Human ecology, broadly – specifically behavioral, population, community, and historical ecology
Where will you/are you conducting your fieldwork? My dissertation doesn’t require any fieldwork, but I’m involved in a side fieldwork project that takes me to the young country of Kosova in the Balkan peninsula of Europe.
What do you find most interesting about your field work location? In Kosova, the past and present blend together in really interesting ways. We’re conducting an archaeological survey, so we spend most of our time walking around the countryside and inevitably end up talking to people we meet. In a region with very strong ethnic divides between Serbs, Albanians, Bosniaks, and others, cultural heritage really matters to these people. They have very strong historically-situated identities, which in some cases are rooted as far back as the Iron Age. It’s really interesting to encounter a situation where archaeology has such strong implications for people in the present.
What is your most memorable experience thus far in the field? My most memorable experiences from Kosova are unfortunately hearing the stories of the war that happened only twenty years ago. People often want to share the things that happened to them and their families so that we understand what happened there. But there are many positive experiences too, like finding a 5th century monastery up on a beautiful mountainside that some local folks had told us about.
What do you do in your “downtime?” Tell us something interesting about yourself! I spend a lot of my free time volunteering with political organizations. |
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