William Boose, Laney Graduate School PhD candidate in Anthropology, has been awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student Program award by the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board for the 2023-2024 academic year to study in Peru.
The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program and is supported by the U.S. and partner countries around the world. More than 2,000 diverse U.S. students, artists, and early career professionals in more than 100 different fields of study receive Fulbright U.S. Student Program awards annually to study, teach English, and conduct research overseas.
In his Fulbright-funded dissertation research in Peru, titled “Motorcycle Taxis and Urban Modernity: A Comparative Study in Lima and Iquitos,” Boose will critically study the governance of mototaxis (motorcycle taxis) as situated within broader notions of urban “modernity” and “development” in two cities.
Congratulations to our 2023 Anthropology honors students! We wish you all the absolute best in your future endeavors!
You can read more about this year’s honors students and their projects on our 2023 Honor Students page.
Hunter Akridge Thesis Title: Contesting the Cultural Politics of Care: How Equitable Digital Care Platforms Reimagine the Future of Work
Rachel Broun Thesis Title: Enacting Solidarity and Negotiating Fictive Kinship: The Legal Consciousness of Black Women Working in the Criminal Legal System
Pamela Chopra Beniwal Thesis Title: The Effect of Commercialization, Militarization, and Stigmatization of the Breast Cancer Awareness Movement on Breast Cancer Patients
Lucia Buscemi Thesis Title: Footprints of the Roof of the World: Navigating the Impacts of Anthropogenic Activities in the Everest Region
Naomi Gonzalez-Garcia Thesis Title: Constellations of Un-Matter(ing) & Matter(ing) through Atlanta’s Black Spaces: Anthropological Perspectives on Housing and Relationality
Ruth Korder Thesis Title: Detecting Human Adaptations in Populations of the Andean Highlands
Danielle Mangabat Thesis Title: Confronting Colonial Legacies: Imagining a Decolonial Future in the Philippines through Reproductive Health
Natalie McGrath Thesis Title: Recentering the Voices of Pregnant-People and Birth Workers; Narratives of Childbirth
Atlas Moss Thesis Title: Vocal Recognition and Social Knowledge in captive Tufted Capuchin Monkeys (Sapajus apella)
Alvaro Perez Daisson Thesis Title: Race-related Health Disparities in the Context of COVID-19
Tanvi Shah Thesis Title: (Re)constructing Postpartum Depression (PPD) via Cross-Specialty Analysis and an Anthropological Lens of Subjectivity
Krithika Shrinivas Thesis Title: Stone Tools and Sociality: Potential Effects of Conversation and Hobbies on Lithic Quality
Lizzy Wagman Thesis Title: Genome-wide patterns of selection in pre- and post-European contact Caribbean populations
Amy Wang Thesis Title: The Impacts of Social Media on Young Adults’ Body Images in the United States
Sam Weinstein Thesis Title: Vocal Clues to Diabetes Mellitus: Exploring the Ethics and Tech of AI in Clinical Practice
Gracie Wilson Thesis Title: The Culture of College Mental Health: Narratives of Stress, Value, and Belonging
Christopher Zeuthen Thesis Title: Qualitative Examination of Veteran Perspectives on Moral Injury
The Anthropology Department is pleased to announce our 2023 student award winners! For award descriptions and past winners, visit our Departmental Awards webpage. We are so proud of our many impressive students!
Marjorie Shostak Award for Excellence and Humanity in Ethnography:
Pamela Beniwal for her honors thesis “The Effect of Commercialization, Militarization, and Stigmatization of the Breast Cancer Awareness Movement on Breast Cancer Patients”, advised by Mel Konner.
Audrey Lu for her ANT 372W class project “The Lives of Charting: An Emergency Room Scribe’s Perspective (ANT 372W project)”, advised by Anna Grimshaw.
Alvaro Perez Daisson for his honors thesis “Race-related Health Disparities in Cuba in the Context of COVID-19”, advised by Mel Konner and Kristin Phillips.
Christopher Zeuthen for his honors thesis “Veteran Perspectives on Moral Injury”, advised by Mel Konner.
Photo from left to right: Professor Robert Paul, Christopher Zeuthen, Professor Melvin Konner, Audrey Lu, Alvaro Perez Daisson, and Pamela Beniwal.
Trevor E. Stokol Scholarship for Undergraduate Research:
1st Place: Eric Li
Maddie Hasson
Raya Islam (not pictured)
2023 Graduate Student Awards
The George Armelagos Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student: AJ Jones, Caroline Owens
The Lindo lab specializes in mapping little-explored human lineages of the Americas.
Previously published research found evidence of the tuberculosis bacterium in the skeletal material of 1,400-year-old Andean mummies, contradicting some theories that TB did not exist in South America until the arrival of Europeans 500 years ago.
The current paper provides the first evidence for a human immune-system response to TB in ancient Andeans and gives clues to when and how their genomes may have adapted to that exposure.
Among the strongest signals detected were for biomarkers that are switched on in modern humans during an active TB infection. The researchers modeled the timing of selection for several of the genes involved in the TB-response pathways. Although they were not as strong as for exposure to TB, some signals were also detected for biomarkers related to adaptation to hypoxia, or low levels of oxygen in the blood that result from living at high altitude.
“Human-pathogen co-evolution is an understudied area that has a huge bearing on modern-day public health,” Sophie Joseph says. “Understanding how pathogens and humans have been linked and affecting each other over time may give insights into novel treatments for any number of infectious diseases.”
Dr. Alexander Hinton graduated in 1997 and majored in Psychology and Cultural Anthropology. His dissertation was on the Cambodian genocide. Today, he is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Director of the Center for the Genocide and Human Rights, and UNESCO Chair in Genocide Prevention at Rutgers University, Newark. He is an award-winning author and editor of seventeen books, including most recently, Anthropological Witness: Lessons from the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (Cornell, 2022)—which focuses on his testimony as an expert witness at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal and his exchange with “Brother Number Two.”
The AIME award is reserved for persons who have “raised public awareness of anthropology and have had a broad and sustained public impact at local, national, and international level.” Congratulations Dr. Alexander Hinton!
Read more about the AAA 2022 Award Recipients here!
SJ Dillon has been awarded the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship for their dissertation research into gender dysphoria. They will will provide an ethnographic account of a diverse group of trans communities in contemporary Atlanta, Georgia, and will compare discourses on gender dysphoria in national medical and state-level legal discourses to that ethnographic data.
Ruşen Bingül, a second-year Ph.D. student, has been awarded the American Ethnological Society (AES) Field Grant and the Halle Institute Global Research Fellowship for her summer doctoral research fieldwork. Both grants are for students who are in the pre-candidacy and whose projects involve ethnographic field research in anthropology or allied fields. Ruşen will use these grants for her summer fieldwork from May 15 to August 20, focusing on legal pluralism and alternative justice mechanism among Kurds in Mardin, the Kurdish Region of Turkey.
Chikako Ozawa-de Silva, Elena Lesley, Bruce Knauft, Bradd Shore
Marjorie Shostak Award for Excellence and Humanity in Ethnography:
1st prize: Elena Lesley for her dissertation “Testimony as Transformation: Resilience, Regeneration, and Moral Action through Spiritually-Adapted Narrative Therapy in Cambodia”, advised by Bruce Knauft.
Runner up: Tatenda Mangurenje for her dissertation “Fractured Belonging: Black Police Officers and the New Civil Rights Movement”, advised by Peter Brown.
George Armelagos Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student: Megan Beney Kilgore and Scott Schnur
Miriam Kilimo, PhD Candidate at the Department of Anthropology, Emory University
Miriam will be joining James Madison University for the 2021-2022 academic year as a Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) fellow. The Preparing Future Faculty Program at JMU seeks to promote access, inclusion and diversity that are foundational for the provision of outstanding education. The program provides teaching opportunities, mentorship, and professional development to doctoral candidates prior to the completion of the dissertation.
EMORY ANTHROPOLOGY 