Ph.D. Outcomes

Alumni of the the UConn Department of Anthropology go on to work at colleges and universities in research, teaching, and tenure-track positions. They also take on a wide variety of roles in the public and private sectors.

Recent Alumni

Learn about the first jobs our recent graduates landed after completing their degrees, plus their advisors and dissertation titles.

2023

Christina Balentine
Research Scholar, Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut

  • Dissertation Title: To the Ends of the Earth: A Biocultural Analysis of the Population Histories of Ancient Indigenous Peoples From Patagonia &Amp; Tierra Del Fuego
  • Advisor: Deborah Bolnick

Jayson Gill
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Boise State University

  • Dissertation Title: Factors Underlying Long Term Cultural Change in the Eurasian Middle Pleistocene
  • Advisor: Daniel Adler

2022

Krista Dotzel
Archaeologist, USDA Connecticut Office, Natural Resources Conservation Service

  • Dissertation Title: When the Corn is in the Milk: Phytoliths, Plant Processing Strategies, and Agriculture in Southern New England 2500-500 BP
  • Advisor: Kevin McBride

2021

Ashley Graham
Director of Research and Operations, The Task Force For Global Health — Focus Area for Compassion and Ethics (FACE)

  • Dissertation Title: When Is It Acceptable to Vaccinate Pregnant Women? Risk, Structural Violence, and Global Ethnography in Epidemic Crises
  • Advisor: Merrill Singer

Alison Mant-Melville
Data Scientist, DOT Loves Data (Wellington, New Zealand)

  • Dissertation Title: Structure and Variability in the Eastern African Middle Stone Age
  • Advisor: Daniel Adler

Lucas Proctor
Postdoctoral Researcher, Institut für Archäologische Wissenschaften, Goethe Universität-Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt, Germany)

  • Dissertation Title: Fueling Socioeconomic Complexity: Fuel Use and Fuel Economies During the Chalcolithic and Iron Ages of Northern Mesopotamia
  • Advisor: Alexia Smith

Jose Enrique Hasemann Lara
Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Sociology, Universität Konstantz (Konstanz, Germany)

  • Dissertation Title: Mosquitoes, Place, and Self: Local Responses to Prevention Programs for the Mosquito Vectors That Transmit Zika, Dengue, and Chikungunya.
  • Advisor: Merrill Singer

Katherine Mueller

  • Dissertation Title: Staging Entangled Identities: Belonging and Identity Politics in London’s Performing Arts
  • Advisor: Françoise Dussart

Alexander Brittingham
Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Earth Sciences, Hebrew University (Jerusalem, Israel)

  • Dissertation Title: Stable Isotopes in the Southern Caucasus: Modern Variability, Preservation, and Archaeological Applications
  • Advisor: Gideon Hartman

2020

Olivia Marcus
Postdoctoral Researcher, Rory Meyers College of Nursing, New York University

  • Dissertation Title: Ayahuasca Therapies: The Making and Remaking of Traditional Healing in Global Context
  • Advisor: César Abadía-Barrero

2019

Zareen Thomas
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, College of Wooster (Ohio, U.S.)

  • Dissertation Title: Youth Mediators: Hip-Hop, NGOs, and the Politics of Identity in Colombia and Bolivia
  • Advisor: Françoise Dussart

Anne Kohler
Program Manager, Human Resources Agency of New Britain, Division of Health and Wellness

  • Dissertation Title: Pursuing a Good Life: The Sociocultural, Experiential, and Clinical Experiences of Down Syndrome
  • Advisor: Sarah Willen

Joy Ciofi
Teacher, Humanities, Gwinett County Public Schools

  • Dissertation Title: Aging and Identity in the Landscape of the Mega-Casino
  • Advisor: Merrill Singer

Samei Siavash
Postdoctoral Fellow, Humanities Institute, University of Connecticut

  • Dissertation Title: Herding in the Highlands: Pastoralism and the Making of the Kura-Araxes Cultural Tradition
  • Advisor: Natalie Munro

More Ph.D. Alumni

2018

  • Madelynn von Baeyer: Seeds of Complexity: An Archaeobotanical Study of Incipient Social Complexity at Late Chalcolithic Çadır Höyük, Turkey
  • Jordan Kiper: Propaganda and Mass Violence in the Yugoslav Wars: A Post-Conflict Ethnography

2017

  • Bill Farley: Pequot Cultural Entanglement in 17th-Century Connecticut
  • Ronnie Shepard: Soaking in Manhood: (Re)Negotiating Masculinities and Sexualities in the Spas of Quito, Ecuador
  • Zachary Singer: The Paleoindian Occupation of Southern New England: Evaluating Sub-Regional Variation in Paleoindian Lifeways in the New England-Maritimes Region
  • Jackie Meier: Tracing economic, ritual, and social pathways to Neolithization in the southern Levant through human-animal relationships at Kfar HaHoresh
  • Jennifer Cook: Legal permanent migration, strategic il/legalization, and intergenerational social mobility in a transnational migrant network

2016

  • Melissa Kerr Chiovenda: Cultural Trauma, History Making, and the Politics of Ethnic Identity among Afghan Hazaras
  • David Leslie: Stable Isotopic Evidence for Landscape Environmental Reconstructions, Kapthurin Formation, Kenya
  • Richard Colon: Fraternal Force: A Cultural Intervention to Alter the Way Fraternities Communicate and Conceptualize Sexual Violence
  • Catherine Buerger: Claiming the State: The Impact of Human Rights Education and Legal Mobilization on Ghanaian Political Subjectivity
  • Sylvia Jalil-Gutierrez: Health Care Experiences of the Uninsured at the Dawn of the 21st Century
  • Shir Lerman: ‘Un Pueblo tan Dulce’: Diabetes, Depression, and Obesity Syndemics in Puerto Rico

2015

  • Marie Brault: Married Young Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health in Low-Income Communities in Mumbai, India.
  • Nicholas Blegen: The Middle Stone Age on the Margins: Chronological and archaeological contexts for hominin behavioral evolution in the Middle and Late Pleistocene of East Africa.
  • Jamie Grant: Geomorphology of the Connecticut River, as a Spatial-Temporal Context for Understanding Pre-contact Settlement Patterns.
  • Martin Gabriel Hrynick: Wabanaki Architecture in Historical and Archaeological Context.
  • Rebecca Nelson: Giving Ideas, Taking Photos: Volunteer Tourism and Cultural Production in a Guatemalan Women’s Weaving Cooperative.
  • Rita Offiaeli: When the Kola nut (Cola acuminata) Meets The Electric Slide: Constructing Transnationalisms.
  • Dianne M. Schindler: Transgender Kinship: Transforming Family.

2014

  • Robert Allen Booth: Museums at the Margins of Europe: Slovenian Museums as Sites of Identity Apprehension.
  • Cyndi Frank: HIV Infection: Solitary Work, Silent Suffering: Beliefs about Responsibility for Health and the Ability to Impact Disease Progression.
  • Philip Jacob Glauberman: Middle Palaeolithic Regional Land-Use and Behavior in Dutch and Belgian Limburg: Integrating Data from Upland Open-Air Sites.
  • Ruthanne Marcus: Women’s Discourse on the Homeless Experience: It’s About Love and Loss.
  • Tiziana Matarazzo: Micromorphological Analysis of Activity Areas at the Early Bronze Age (EBA) Village of T.A.V. Afragola in Southern Italy.
  • Bayla Ostrach: In the Wake of Policy Change: Women’s Experiences with Obstacles to Care Following Implementation of Publicly Funded Abortion in Catalunya.
  • Tom Hart: Phytoliths, Starch Grains, and Emerging Social Complexity at Tell Zeidan, Syria.
  • Heather Cruz: Searching for Sub-cultural Systems during the Terminal Archaic: An Examination of Burial Rituals and Socio-economic Networks in Southern New England.

2013

  • Marisa L. Prosser: Cultural Identity in Costa Rica: Implications for the Well-being of Nicaraguan Immigrants.
  • Katharine Brooks Richards: International Trials, Rule of Law and Local Legal Consciousness in Croatia: Can International Justice Transform Local Norms?.

2012

  • Nicola Bulled: (Re) distribution of blame: Politics of HIV knowledge among youth in Lesotho.
  • Anna Marie Nicolaysen: Empowering Small Farmers in India through Organic Agriculture and Biodiversity Conservation.
  • Benjamin Grant Purzycki: Finding Minds in the Natural World: Dynamics of the Religious System in the Tyva Republic.
  • John H. Shaver: The Behavioral Ecology of Fijian Religion.
  • Nathan Wales: Ancient DNA from Archaeobotanical Remains: The Next Generation.

2011

  • Traci H. Abraham: Struggling Toward al-Andalus: An Exploration of Attitudes in Andalusia Toward Immigration from Morocco.
  • Shan-Estelle Brown: Cultural Models of Genetic Screening and Perceptions of Sickle Cell Disease in High-Risk Guadeloupean French Communities.
  • Philip J. Graham: Ubaid Agriculture at Kenan Tepe, Southeastern Turkey.
  • Sarah Patricia Sportman: Halcyon Days: The Historical Archaeology of Community and Identity at Hammondville, New York, 1870-1900.

2010

  • Ann M. Cheney: The Contours of Womanhood: Living with “Eating Disorders” in Southern Italy.
  • Rebecca Beebe: Cultural Normalization of Violence among a Detention Population.
  • Asha Cat Srinivasan Shipman: Mate Selection in Modern India.
  • Susan DiVietro: “Sanctions and Sanctuary” Revisited: Domestic Violence and Cultural Models of Intervention.
  • Kateryna Maltseva: Values and Norms of Prosocial Behavior in Modern Sweden.

2009

  • Elaine M. Bennett: Understanding Childhood Malnutrition in a Maya Village in Guatemala: A Syndemic Perspective.
  • Blaire Ort Gagnon: Powwow Arts and Crafts Markets and the Engendering of Social Relationships.
  • Jason Richard Mancini: Beyond Reservation: Indian Survivance in Southern New England and Eastern Long Island, 1713-1861.
  • Lara Louise Watkins: Beyond Ethnicity as Risk Factor: Biocultural Context and Correlates of Type 2 Diabetes in a Cambodian American Community.

2008

Akeia A. Benard: The Free African American Cultural Landscape at Newport, RI, 1774-1826.

2007

.James Cedric Woods: Contemporary Native American tribes of southern New England: the Mashantucket Pequot of Connecticut and the Mashpee Wampanoag of Massachusetts.

2006

Candace Storey Alcorta: Youth, Religion, and Resilience.