Category: Alumni

Anthropology Alumni Daniel Thompson publishes book: Smugglers, Speculators, and the City in the Ethiopia-Somalia Borderlands

Emory University and Anthropology Alumni Daniel K. Thompson publishes book titled Smugglers, Speculators, and the City in the Ethiopia-Somalia Borderlands.

Daniel graduated from Emory University with his PhD in 2019 and is now an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Merced. His research focused on exploring eastern African and US migration, border-making and how urbanization shaped economic strategies for handling uncertainty.

First page excerpt: “For a century, the Ethiopian city Jigjiga was known as a dusty hub of cross-border smuggling and a hotbed of rebellion on Ethiopia’s eastern frontier. After 2010, it transformed into a post-conflict boomtown, becoming one of Africa’s fastest-growing cities and attracting Somali return-migrants from across the globe. This study examines Jigjiga’s astonishing transformation through the eyes of its cross-border traders, urban businesspeople, and officials. Daniel K. Thompson follows traders and return-migrants across borders to where their lives collide in the city. Analysing their strategies of mobility and exchange, this study reveals how Ethiopia’s federal politics, Euro-American concerns about terrorism, and local business aspirations have intertwined to reshape links between border-making and city-making in the Horn of Africa. To understand this distinctive brand of urbanism, Thompson follows globalized connections and reveals how urbanites in Africa and beyond participate in the “urban borderwork” of constructing, as well as contesting, today’s border management regimes.”

Smugglers, Speculators, and the City in the Ethiopia-Somalia Borderlands by Daniel K. Thompson is available for purchase online.

Congratulations to graduate student Sasha Tycko for her “Not One Tree”

Photo of Sasha by Peter Habib

Anthropology graduate student Sasha Tycko was awarded the Krause Essay Prize from the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program for her essay, “Not One Tree“.

“Sasha Tycko is an anthropologist and artist working on a PhD at Emory University. Her research focuses on the Atlanta forest at the center of the conflict over “Cop City,” using a range of media to explore how the contested landscape motivates new articulations of history, nature, and ethics. Through this work, she has produced two films, Dwelling: A Measure of Life in the Atlanta Forest and Atlanta Forest Garden: Four Days of Work, and a photography exhibition, “Ways of the Atlanta Forest.”

The Krause Essay Prize is awarded annually to the work that best exemplifies the art of essaying. Nominations for the Krause Essay Prize are made each year by a committee of writers, filmmakers, radio producers, visual artists, editors, and readers. 

Congrats Sasha!

Visiting Assistant Professor and PhD alumnus Nikola Johnson awarded 2024 Wenner-Gren Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship Grant

Anthropology Visiting Assistant Professor Nikola Johnson was awarded the 2024 Wenner-Gren Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship Grant to support 9 months of writing to complete a monograph based on research conducted for his dissertation, titled Emergent Citizenships: Mapuche (Indigenous) and Chilean (non-Indigenous) Politics and Belonging in peri-urban Santiago, Chile. 

Professor Johnson said of his project, “This book project explores how the politics of autogestión have led to the emergence of democratic frameworks that contrast with liberal representational democracy in a globalized, neoliberal era. Frequently translated as “self-help”, contemporary scholarship has often distorted the concept of autogestión by analyzing community care practices as responses to neoliberal restructurings or products of neoliberal governmentality. In contrast, my research found that the concept of autogestión is more accurately understood as “lived democratic practice” and traces its origins to the 1960s “People Power” movements in North America and Europe, Latin American Third Worldism, and African decolonization. It draws from my 30 months of ethnographic and archival research which found that the transnational discourse of autogestión influenced the practices of democracy during Chile’s Social Explosion (October 2019), ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic (March 2020-present) and failed process to re-write the constitution written during the Pinochet Dictatorship (October 2022-December 2023). Through situating this Chilean case study within a global assemblage of social movements from the 1960s to the present, this project contributes to the broader anthropological theory of politics by scaling down its analysis to the level of everyday life to analyze where, when, and through whom democratic practices are exercised.”

Congratulations Nikola Johnson!

Emory Anthropology Alumni Lucia Buscemi awarded Fulbright Fellowship

Lucia Buscemi graduated from Emory University in 2024 with a B.A. in Anthropology and a B.S. in Environmental Science. They are now working as a researcher in Nepal under the Fulbright US Student Researcher Program. Lucia’s project focuses on investigating the impacts of climate change on mountain tourism and traditional migration patterns in the Khumbu Valley (Everest region) in collaboration with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and Sagarmatha Next. Lucia’s interest in studying the effects of anthropogenic activities in the Nepalese Himalayas began with their experience as a Halle Institute Undergraduate Fellow at Emory.

During the summer of 2022, Lucia received a grant through Halle to conduct research for their Anthropology honors thesis in the Khumbu region. Their thesis research focused on the effects of the adventure tourism industry and climate change on the culture and livelihoods of residents of the Everest region, exploring how the autonomy of these communities is affected by and persists through recent anthropogenic changes. Lucia’s Fulbright research builds upon their prior experiences in Nepal, including an internship at Sagarmatha Next in Kathmandu during the summer of 2023, where they developed a sustainability certification program designed specifically for lodges and hotels in the Himalayas. Their upcoming Fulbright project is poised to offer valuable insights into the intricate interplay between climate change, tourism dynamics, and socio-economic patterns in the Himalayan region. 

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program expands perspectives through academic and professional advancement and cross-cultural dialogue. Fulbright creates connections in a complex and changing world. In partnership with more than 140 countries worldwide, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers unparalleled opportunities in all academic disciplines to passionate and accomplished graduating college seniors, graduate students, and young professionals from all backgrounds. Program participants pursue graduate study, conduct research, or teach English abroad. 

Congratulations Lucia!

Congratulations to our 2024 Anthropology Honors Students!

Read more about this year’s honors students and their projects on our 2024 Honors Students page.

(left to right: Dr. Robert Paul, Sarah Vickery-Hartanto*, Kevin Gunawardana*, Elizabeth Whiteside, Isabel Staton, Ezra Packard, Emily Silver, Sona Davis, Eric Li) *Sarah and Kevin are on track to graduate with honors in December 2024.

Sona Davis
Thesis Title: Investigating the role of the BAF Complex in Human Disease and Evolution
Advisor: David Gorkin, John Lindo

Maddie Hasson
Thesis Title: Guiding Cell Perception of its Microenvironment for Enhanced Microfracture Repair
Advisor: Jay Patel, Craig Hadley

Raya Islam
Thesis Title: Mapping Bengali New York
Advisor: Yami Rodriguez

Emily Jang
Thesis Title: Exploring Beliefs & Identity: The Internal & External World of Asian Americans
Advisor: Chikako Ozawa-de Silva, Brendan Ozawa-de Silva

Qucheng (Eric) Li
Thesis Title: Sinicizing Muslims: Haunting, Punitiveness, and Sacrifice in Neoliberalizing China
Advisor: Michael Peletz

Ezra Packard
Thesis Title: The Stories Behind Atlanta Food Growing: Oral History and Exhibition as Research Method
Advisor: Kristin Phillips, Jonathan Coulis

Emily Silver
Thesis Title: Community Organizing in Atlanta: Perspectives from the AIDS Crisis and COVID-19 Pandemic
Advisor: Rachel Hall-Clifford

Andrea Snoddy
Thesis Title: Myths and Medicine: Analyzing Medical Racism in the Atlanta Metropolitan Area
Advisor: John Lindo

Isabel Staton
Thesis Title: Farmers in the Storm: Exploring Alternative Risk Management Strategies Amid Winter Storm Elliott
Advisor: Hilary King

Phoebe Taiwo
Thesis Title: Examining the Relationship Between Physical and Mental Comorbidities and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Serostatus in Black Women
Advisor: Anna Rubstova

Elizabeth Whiteside
Thesis Title: Uncovering Menopause in Tufted Capuchin Monkeys (Sapajus apella): Analyzing the Relationship between Estradiol, Aging, and Behavioral Estrus in a Captive Population
Advisor: Marcela Benitez

Anthropology PhD Student Sasha Tycko unveils her exhibition of photographs, “Ways of the Atlanta Forest” to the public.

The Anthropology department just celebrated the opening of “Ways of the Atlanta Forest,” an exhibition of photographs by one of our PhD candidates, Sasha Tycko (C’19). The exhibition is based on Tycko’s dissertation research, which focuses on the life of the “Atlanta forest,” the site of intense conflict over the City of Atlanta’s plan to build a police training complex known as “Cop City.” Over two years, Tycko lived and worked in the forest, using a range of media, including analogue photography, to explore how the abandoned forest landscape—formerly the site of a city prison farm and a slave plantation—motivates new articulations of history, nature, and ethics. Working with the visual language of landscape photography, Tycko’s photographs cast the landscape as a layered repository of history and imagination.

This exhibition inaugurates the Department of Anthropology’s new exhibition space, which is meant to foster dialogue across campus and stimulate debate about what might constitute an engaged anthropology.

There will be a public discussion about “Ways of the Atlanta Forest” between Sasha Tycko and Jason Francisco (Film & Media, Visual Arts) on March 19th, from 1:00pm – 2:30pm in Anthropology building room 206. All photographs are gelatin silver prints handmade by Tycko in Emory’s chemical darkroom.

Sasha Tycko also recently published an essay based on her dissertation research, “Not One Tree,” in n+1 magazine.

Emory Anthropology Alumnae Joanna Davidson ’07 and Dinah Hannaford ’14 edit volume publication, Opting Out: Women Messing with Marriage around the World.

Emory Anthropology alumnae Joanna Davidson ’07 and Dinah Hannaford ’14 joined forces to publish an edited volume, Opting Out: Women Messing with Marriage around the World (Rutgers University Press 2022). The book gathers ethnographic accounts of women moving away from conventional marital arrangements in countries all over the world. From Brazil to Botswana, the contributors examine the conditions that make this widespread – although locally variable – phenomenon possible and consider what the implications of opting out might be, both for marriage itself and for the anthropological study of it.

Postdoctoral Graduate Scott Schnur published in Nature Energy for co-authored article, A Framework to Centre Justice in Energy Transition Innovations.

Postdoctoral Graduate, Scott Schnur collaborated with researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and other universities published an article in Nature Energy titled A Framework to Centre Justice in Energy. In the article, Scott and his colleagues discuss the important role of community engagement as a tool to promote equity in the green Energy Transition. They propose a framework that developers, planners, government officials, and other stakeholders can use in order to promote energy justice and inclusivity in the critical work that lies ahead in transforming our grid and combating climate change. Scott says, “The article continues my interest in exploring ways to promote equity and justice in relation to emergent climate futures.”

Check out the write up from NREL here!

PhD Student Will Boose has First Peer-reviewed Article Published in Top Social Sciences and Humanities Journal, Histórica.

“Will Boose‘s article offers an ambitious, though still fragmented, history of motorcycle taxis in Peru. It offers three central arguments. First, it highlights that motorcycle taxi drivers have played a fundamental role in the production of urban space. Second, it argues that state, elite, and popular discourses about “informality” and the “modern city” stigmatize motorcycle taxi drivers in ways that are classist and racialized, targeting them for strict policing. Finally, it suggests that if we think with motorcycle taxi drivers and the materiality of motorcycle taxis, we can reveal the contradictions inherent to the “formal”-“informal”, and “modern”-“non-modern” binaries and thus more lucidly analyze urban space and relations.”

Histórica, based in Peru, is aimed at researchers and a specialized public and publishes works evaluated by peers that constitute an original contribution to the knowledge of Peruvian, Andean, and Amazonian history, as well as Latin American history and global history directly related to the history of the Andean region. In addition to works on history and ethnohistory, the journal includes works on art history, historical anthropology, historical linguistics, historical geography, historical demography, memory studies, and every other discipline, subdiscipline, and field of study in the Humanities and Sciences.

Check out the article here!

Emory Anthropology senior Gracie Wilson wins Lambda Alpha Senior Scholarship

Anthropology BA graduate Gracie Wilson (Ox’21, C’23) is the national first place recipient of the Lambda Alpha National Anthropology Honor Society Senior Scholarship, including $5,000 to help fund her graduate study in anthropology. Each Lambda Alpha chapter may put forward one nominee for the senior scholarship each year. Nominees must be Anthropology majors, Lambda Alpha members, and plan to attend graduate school in Anthropology. The last time Emory’s chapter nominee was selected as the national winner was in 2002.

Gracie was selected as the nominee for Emory’s Lambda Alpha chapter (Beta of Georgia) based on her excellence and leadership in anthropology research. Her senior honors thesis, “The Culture of College Mental Health”, supervised by Oxford professor Alicia DeNicola and ECAS professor Chikako Ozawa-de Silva, began as a research project at Emory’s Oxford College with the goal of better understanding student mental health from an ethnographic approach. The project expanded as Gracie led a team of fellow undergraduate students, and continued across Emory’s two campuses once Gracie transitioned to Emory College and joined the honors program. The team’s findings provide insight into student mental health cultures and how student mental health is created through a series of shared values, narratives, and identities. The work has been presented at the Georgia Undergraduate Research Conference at Valdosta State University and is currently being developed for publication.  

As a graduate student at the University of Chicago pursuing a PhD in Comparative Human Development, Gracie will continue to use anthropological inquiry to explore the ways in which we understand and support college students as they navigate disability, illness, and managed care across educational settings. She is also passionate about the ways anthropology can collaborate with other disciplines– namely with social work, counseling, and the clinical space.

Gracie graduated from Emory this May with Highest Honors in Anthropology, with a concentration in Power, Identity, and Social Justice.