The University Research Committee (URC) has awarded the research team of Dr. David Civitello, Associate Professor of Biology (Principal Investigator) and Dr. Peter Little, Samuel C. Dobbs Professor of Anthropology (Co-Investigator), a $40,000 Interdisciplinary – URC-Halle Institute Global Research Award for their project Linking Movement Patterns of Ranging Livestock Herds in Mwanza, Tanzania to Transmission Potential of Human Schistosomes.
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!
Contaminating Humanitarianism: Cholera, Nationalism, and the (Un)Regulated Life of Syrians in Lebanon
The MESA Graduate Student Paper Prize was established in 2004 and first given in 2005. The purpose of the award is to recognize the work of young scholars. The award is given to the paper that shows the best control of the subject matter and adept methodology, good use of sources and evidence, coherence and elegance of argument and good writing.
Read Peter Habib’s award announcement here!
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!
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!
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
2024 Anthropology Student Awards
The Anthropology Department is pleased to announce our 2024 student award winners! Undergraduate awards were presented at our annual Honors and Awards Ceremony on Friday, April 26th. For award descriptions and past winners, visit our Departmental Awards webpage. We are so proud of our many impressive students. Please join us in congratulating them!
Outstanding Senior Award:
Outstanding Junior Award:
Marjorie Shostak Award for Excellence and Humanity in Ethnography:
Trevor E. Stokol Scholarship for Undergraduate Research 2024-25:
George Armelagos Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student:
Anthropology Professor Debra Vidali poem, Two Row Repair: A Trilogy, which is featured in the March 2024 issue of the American Anthropological Association journal, Anthropology and Humanism. An abstract and early view of the poem can be accessed on the online library, AnthroSource and a journal issue will be available in the Emory University library later this Spring. Vidali received first place in the 2023 Society for Humanistic Anthropology’s 37th Annual Ethnographic Poetry Competition for Parts II and III of this trilogy.
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.
Katy Lindquist, Anthropology graduate, received a 3-year Postdoctoral Associate position in the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University starting fall following her PhD completion here at Emory University in the Department of Anthropology. The Klarman Fellowship in the College of Arts & Sciences provide postdoctoral opportunities to early-career scholars conducting researching in any discipline. Recipients may conduct research in any discipline and are offered independence and enabled to devote themselves to innovative research without being constrained to specific outcomes or teaching responsibilities.
Katy Lindquist is featured on Cornell University’s website under the Current Fellows. Congratulations Katy!
EMORY ANTHROPOLOGY 