DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

Manikandan Abimanyu

Archaeology (Doctoral Student 2024)
Regional Focus: Andaman Islands

manik-abi@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

I am a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Anthropology, and my subfield is Archaeology. My research centers on historical archaeology and explores the complex relationship between colonialism, water security, and climate justice in the Andaman Islands. In my dissertation, I examine how British colonial authorities implemented water management systems that reshaped the islands’ natural landscape, affecting both the lives of penal colony inhabitants and Indigenous communities. By placing the Andaman Islands within the larger context of the Indian Ocean, I explore how colonial water management practices in penal colonies were part of broader resource control strategies and environmental transformation across colonial territories. Through GIS mapping, material culture analysis, and oral histories, my work aims to contribute to conversations on resource distribution, ecological justice, and the legacies of colonialism in this interconnected region.

Outside of my academic work, I am passionate about environmental justice activism. In my free time, I enjoy Tamil folk music, Hindustani Classical music, film appreciation, landscape mobile photography, and walking, which allow me to connect with nature and explore diverse perspectives on environmental and social issues.

Aseel Abulhab (she/her)

Linguistic Anthropology (Doctoral Student 2022)
Regional Focus: Middle East

aseelabulhab2028@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

D/deafness; sign language; disability studies; immigration; refugees; resettlement

Michael Angland

Cultural Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2023)
Regional Focus: Chicago, United States (Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi)

MichaelAngland2026@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

My dissertation examines the everyday lives of white liberal residents of the South Side Chicago neighborhoods of Beverly and Morgan Park as they work to create a local community that reflects their liberal values. I analyze how white liberals interact with their Black and non-liberal white neighbors as they build a community they experience as tolerant, safe, interesting, and beautiful. My research provides insight into the daily lives of white American liberals in a time of increasing challenges to American liberalism. I analyze how white liberals’ political commitments are connected to class status and social dimensions of everyday life.

I grew up in Ireland and hold a BA in Middle Eastern Studies from Cambridge and MA in Anthropology from the EHESS in Paris. I analyze the US through a culturalist perspective and work to particularize the US in relation to other parts of the world in my research.

Sofyan Ansori (he/him/his)

Cultural Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2022)
Regional Focus: Southeast Asia, Indonesia

SofyanAnsori2022@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

My dissertation project examines relationships between humans and fires in light of the current climate crisis. In particular, my research interrogates fire governance through the perspective of Ngaju people, an Indigenous community in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. My ethnographic work engages with how Indigenous subjects navigate their thoughts and actions between the burning forests, the vibrant fires, and the state’s ongoing desire to enforce anti-fire policies. 

To learn more, see Google Scholar:  Google Scholar | Twitter: @cappimpong

Bobbie Benavidez (she/her)

Biological Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2023)
Regional Focus:

bobbiebenavidez2022@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Indigenous knowledge, human population genetics & health disparities.

Emily Barron

Biological Anthropology (Doctoral Student 2021)

emilybarron2026@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Neurodevelopment; brain evolution; brain energetics and metabolism; life history theory; developmental plasticity; cognitive development; DOHaD; the embodiment of stress; nutrition; intergenerational transmission of health, disease, & stress.

Anna Brown

Archaeology (Doctoral Student Fall 2023)
Regional Focus: Latin America (specifically Central America)

annabrown2028@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Anna’s research centers questions of households, everyday life, and human-animal relationships of the Lacandon Maya. Specifically, her research investigates hunting and subsistence strategies of the Lacandon Maya during the transition from the Late Post-Classic to the historic periods in the Southern lowlands of Chiapas, Mexico. Anna is dedicated to Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS) and is a member of the LACS Mellon Cluster program. Anna is also interested in the historic period of Puebla City, Mexico, and the intersections of race, social identity, and class in colonial Mexico.

Key terms: Households, everyday life, Maya hunting, Mexico, Latin America

Austin Bryan

Cultural Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2022)
Regional Focus: Eastern Africa

AustinBryan2025@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

My research focuses on biopolitics, global health, development aid, social movements, and comparative law. My dissertation analyzes global medical apartheid logic and practices. I have conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork with healthcare workers, development aid workers, and LGBTQ+ and HIV activists in Uganda. My research has been published in the Journal of Eastern African Studies, edited collections on Popular Culture in Africa and Human Rights, and collaborative human rights reports with activist interlocutors. At Northwestern I worked as a Research Assistant at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs and as a coordinator of AfriSem in the Program of African Studies. Before joining Northwestern, I earned my BA in Africana Studies from North Carolina State University, where I was a Park Scholar and Caldwell Fellow.

Ca’la Connors

Biological Anthropology (Doctoral Student 2022)
Regional Focus:

ca'laconnors2022@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Intergenerational stress transmission; Black women; African diaspora; Stress biology; Health disparities; Biocultural embodiment; Developmental plasticity; Racialization; Inequality; Intrauterine environments; Developmental Origins of Health and Disease.

Kyle Craig (he/him)

Cultural Anthropology PhD Winter 2025
Regional Focus: Middle East and North Africa (MENA); Amman, Jordan

KyleCraig2023@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

My dissertation examines the intersections of youth temporalities, the affective resonances of urban material, and the politics of public aesthetics via the graffiti/street art scene in Amman, Jordan. I attend to the multitude ways Amman-based graffiti/street artists channel their experiences of Amman as an "empty" city with high unemployment and scant spaces for youth leisure and creative expression into public art projects that for them represent small steps in the constitution of the ideal future city. One core impetus for this project is to underscore the need to move beyond the often restricting and romanticized framework of "resistance art" when examining the nexus between youth politics and aesthetics, particularly in the MENA region.

Tennyson Dall (she/her)

Biological Anthropology (Doctoral Student 2024)

tennysondall2029@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Health disparities in minority and indigenous populations, human gut microbiome, dietary evolution, disparities in rates of metabolic disease across populations. 

Im a 1st yr PhD candidate in Katherine Amato's gut microbiome research lab. My work focused on how changes it diet can effect the human gut microbiome make up and how that change relates to increased rates of metabolic disease. 

Hamideh Dorzadeh

Cultural Anthropology (Doctoral Student 2024)
Regional focus: Middle East

HamidehDorzadeh2030@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

My research focuses on the Baloch in the Persian Gulf and explores patterns of migration, notions of belonging, marginalization, identity formation, kin relations, and transnationalism. 

Alicia Fahrner (she/her)

Biological Anthropology (Doctoral Student 2022)
Regional Focus:

aliciafahrner2027@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

I am interested in examining the health consequences of social inequalities. More specifically, how biosocial pathways such as race-based traumatic stress impact Black health and contribute to racialized health disparities. 
Developmental Origins of Health and Disease; Intergenerational transmission of stress and trauma; epigenetic inheritances; developmental plasticity; anti-Black racism; micro-aggressions.

Julio Garcia-Solares

Cultural Anthropology (Doctoral Student 2021)

juliogarciasolares2027@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

I am broadly interested in the intersection of Latinx aesthetics, identity, and placemaking practices. My current research focuses on working-class Latinx communities within hardcore punk and metal music scenes in Los Angeles County. I examine how Latinx lived experiences shape their aesthetic productions, such as sounds, artwork, lyrics, merchandise, and other ephemera. Also, I analyze how these aesthetic productions become placemaking practices and how their perspectives are connected to broader issues affecting Latinx communities in the United States. My other research interests include the politics of world-building within video games. 

Key terms: Latinx communities; music; United States; youth; placemaking; aesthetics; race, class, & gender; diaspora; critical phenomenology; critical race theory; materialities 

Regional focus: Los Angeles County, United States

Gerpha Gerlin

Medical Anthropology MPH/PhD (PhD Candidate 2024)
Regional Focus: United States, France, United Kingdom, Haiti

ggerlin@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content: I study the anthropology of medicine, particularly psychiatry, from a science and technology studies lens. I am also pursuing training in public health. My interests center around chronic mental illness and disability, custodial care (especially interface with the criminal-legal system), and identity-formation. My dissertation examines how people with ongoing experiences of psychological suffering and disablement engage in healing practices. I consider for mental health patients, service users, and survivors what it might involve to re(dis)cover an ability to participate fully and freely in the world.

James Gibb (he/him/his)

Biological Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2023)

jamesgibb2026@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

James' research broadly focuses on LGBTQ2+ population health, with a particular emphasis on understanding how social adversity, marginalization, and discrimination "gets under the skin" to influence variability in physiological function and patterns of health and disease among sexual and gender diverse peoples across their life-course. As a queer-identifying biological anthropologist, his research program is broadly motivated by his lived experience and desire to utilize his relative position of privilege to advance LGBTQ2+ equity and use his expertise in service to LGBTQ2+ communities.

To learn more about James' work, visit Researchgate.net | Google Scholar | Twitter: @JamesKGibb

Syd González (they/them)

Cultural Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2023)
Houston, Texas (Sana, Karankawa, Coahuiltecan, Atakapa-Ishak)

sydneygonzalez2026@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Syd González is researching the material embodiment of masculinity among Latinx populations in Houston, Texas and surrounding areas. Their questions include: 1. How do Latinx in Houston, Texas materially embody forms of masculinity to operationalize gender and sexual identification in addition to joy? and 2. How do conceptions of ‘Latinx’ and ‘masculinity’ vary across ethnic identifiers (Chicano, Latino, Mexican, etc.) and where do they intersect? They utilize semiotics as a framework of analysis in addition to queer theory and Indigenous knowledges surrounding community-based practices. In the field they utilize photo-ethnography and photo voice as their primary methodologies. Syd is part of the Gender & Sexuality Graduate Cluster and a fellow at the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research.

Bridgette Hulse (she/her)

Archaeology (PhD Candidate 2022)
Regional Focus: England

BridgetteHulse2025@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

I research agency and meaning in Medieval English graffiti. I use a combination of agency/resistance theory, semiotics, and buildings archaeology to analyze graffiti in context. I'm also working with the Center for the Scientific Studies in the Arts to employ various imaging techniques for my research.

Hannah Jacobson

Biological Anthropology (Doctoral Student 2022)

hannahjacobson2027@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Gut microbiome, hominin evolution, bioenergetics, nutrition, dietary evolution, health and disease, life history evolution

Hannah’s research focuses on the metabolic contributions of the gut microbiome to the human (and hominin) energy budget and how this may have contributed to encephalization in early Homo 2.0 MA.  She is specifically interested in how short chain fatty acids are used in energy production and as signaling molecules throughout the body to regulate adiposity.  Understanding the coevolutionary trajectory of humans and their gut microbes will be important in a public health context to treat modern disease.  Hannah approaches this biological work from a biocultural and embodied perspective, with an emphasis on how environmental signals become embedded and materialized in our bodies, impacting our evolution, health, and disease.  Feel free to email her if you have questions about her research or otherwise - she’s always happy to chat!

Layla Joseph

B-MD/PhD (Doctoral Student 2024)
Medical Anthropology, Regional Focus: United States

layla.joseph@northwestern.edu
Research Content: I am interested in exploring protective factors derived from community-based forms of care and protection that impact pregnant people's perinatal health outcomes. I am focused specifically on the proximity of pregnant people to police violence/surveillance and identifying community-based strategies for preventing morbidity and mortality that can be integrated into the fabric of Western medical practice.

Şeyma Kabaoğlu (she/her)

Cultural Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2020)
Regional Focus: Middle East and North Africa (MENA); Europe; Turkey

seymakabaoglu@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Seyma's research examines how people negotiate norms of ethical/pious finance in the everyday life of Islamic participation banking sector, in order to unpack relations of gender, class and ethnicity in terms of the changing political economy of Turkey. Her project explores the transformation of law and gendered norms of piety in the context of financial sectors of the MENA region, while highlighting previously invisible creative interpretative work Muslim women perform to create and maintain Islamic financial markets.

To learn more, follow Seyma on  Twitter: @seymakabaoglu

Andrew Kim

Linguistic Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2023)
Regional Focus:

andrewkim2025@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Sexuality/Gender; Race/Ethnicity; Embodiment; Intertextuality; Genre; Voice

Seungyun Kim

Cultural (Doctoral Student Fall 2023)
Regional Focus: Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Korea.

seungyunkim2028@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

International development, museums. Specifically, explaining how culture is interpreted in the field of international development, and how national culture and history, presented by national museums, are intertwined with the futurity of development and modernization.

Keegan Krause (he/him)

Biological Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2024)
Regional Focus: North America, Latin America and the Caribbean

keegankrause2025@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Keegan Krause MPH, MA, works at the intersections of human biology, medical anthropology, and public health. Keegan’s work traces how complex social processes and structural conditions are embodied during critical points of biological and psychosocial development, and manifest in adverse health experiences through the life course. His prior work explored political economies of health, violence, and im/migration in informal occupational settings in the Dominican Republic’s tourism sector, and food security in the Sonora-Arizona borderlands. His current research explores the embodiment of adverse experiences during childhood and adolescence in im/migration contexts, and implications for life course and intergenerational health.

To learn more, visit Keegan's Google Scholar | ResearchGate Profile

Eli Kuto (he/him)

Archaeology (Doctoral Student 2022)
Regional Focus: Africa, West Africa, Ghana

emmanuelkuto2027@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Andrew Leith (he/him)

Archaeology (PhD Candidate 2024)

AndrewLeith2026@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Andrew Leith, MS Historic Preservation, MA Social Sciences, is a historical archaeologist, historic preservationist, and museum anthropologist with 18 years of professional experience. As a fifth-generation Chicagoan he has deep ties to local communities throughout the city, as well as an abiding commitment to first-voice histories, heritage, and preservation. Andrew was previously the Director of Cultural Programs and Museum Practice at the Chicago Cultural Alliance and prior to that worked in museum collections management in the Anthropology Department at the Field Museum. He has studied the interpretation and preservation of ruins, as well as researched grass roots preservation of the built environment at the Falmouth Heritage Renewal in Jamaica for US/ICOMOS. He is on the Board of Directors of the Camp Douglas Restoration Foundation, Chicago. Andrew is interested in material culture, critical heritage studies, memory, and community engagement. He is currently researching 19th and 20th century domestic food production in relation to industrial histories and legacies in the Chicagoland area.

Meng-rung Lin

Cultural Anthropology (Doctoral Student 2021)

meng-runglin2026@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Meng-Rung Lin's current research interests focus on the extraction of value and the accumulation of capital in renewable energy. She asks how natural resources and social elements are being calculated as value in the energy market. She also examines the socio-political aspect of renewable energy, especially how these kinds of infrastructures introduced to Taiwan are related to the role of the country in geopolitics and the global market. She joined a research project focusing on how infrastructure and renewable energy rebuilds the labor consciousness and living conditions of fishermen through the offshore wind farm project introduced to the western coastline of Taiwan. In her previous research for her master's thesis, she conducted fieldwork in Phuket, Thailand, where she investigated the logics of capital accumulation and the regime of labor in Chinese-speaking tourism. Lin is especially interested in economic anthropology and political economy, in the topics of green capitalism, climate finance, and labor relations. From her previous works to her prospective research, Lin focuses on the questions about how political and economic power(or matters) interact with people's everyday lives, and how people imagine the future of living in a time of uncertainty.

Paula Maia (she/her)

Biological Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2021)

PaulaMaia2024@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

My research focuses on the biocultural intersection of the microbiome and diet.  Specifically, I am interested in how food (in)security shapes dietary strategies and, subsequently, impacts the gut microbiome and health.  I address these questions using perspectives from foods studies, political ecology, and molecular biology.

SabriAnan Micha (they/them)

Cultural Anthropology (Doctoral Student 2024)
Regional Focus: American South and East African Diaspora

sabrianan@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

SabriAnan (they/them) is a first-year Cultural Anthropology student interested in exploring issues of survival, belonging, and identity-formation amongst Black Queer and Trans people in the American South and throughout the East African Diaspora.

Shelby Mohrs (she/her)

Archaeology (PhD Candidate 2023)
Regional Focus: East Africa: Jamhuri wa Kenya (Kenya) & Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania (Tanzania)

shelbymohrs2026@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Shelby is an archaeology student whose research uses paleoethnobotanical techniques to study how and what people in the past were eating and their everyday lives. Her current research focuses on the historical foodways of city-states of the Swahili Coast. Other research interests include ethnoarchaeology and political ecology.

To learn more, follow Shelby on Twitter: @ShelbyAnnMohrs

Odette Moolten (she/they)

Cultural (Doctoral Student Fall 2023)
Regional Focus: Latin America/Puerto Rico.  

odettemoolten2029@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

My research focuses on the limitations of Western psychiatry in adequately explaining and/or addressing culture-bound psychiatric illnesses, as the DSM-5 has pathologized them, in the Caribbean (such as Ataque de Nervios). As poetic and synesthetic language seem to be features of such illnesses, I would like to take Roman Jakobson’s foundational work onsynesthesia as a cognitive phenomenon and apply it to patient testimonies.

Keywords: semiotics, affect theory, mental illness, psychological anthropology, synesthesia,
ataque, “culture bound illness,” poetic language.

Bahram Naderil

Cultural Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2021)
Regional Focus: Indonesia

Research Content:

I study the ways in which a Muslim 'waria' (transwomen) community in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, conceptualizes the notion of piety. I am specifically interested in exploring the aesthetics aspects of piety, the spectrum of embodying specific forms of gendered-aesthetics within a given time/place of religious devotion, and how the warias negotiate piety alongside social/political/economic challenges in their everyday lives. From my preliminary research, I learn that the warias' views on the sociology and theology of the body/soul relations, their views on sex/work, and their beliefs in the nature of human-god relations are highly fluid, are never universal, but are in direct relation to their individual perception/understanding of what piety and wariahood/transness mean.

Racheal Oyundoyin

Archaeology (Doctoral student 2024)
Regional focus: Africa, West Africa, Nigeria

rachealoyundoyin2028@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Racheal is interested in understanding the nexus between foodways and social formation in Old Oyo, Nigeria.  

Racheal’s research aims to shed light on the complex interplay between food, culture, and societies in Old Oyo from 3000 BP to the 19th century. She is also interested in understanding how people have navigated through food security and insecurity over the last 3000 years. Her research employs methods including paleoethnobotanical and organic residue analyses. 

Key terms: Foodways, Organic residue analysis, archaeobotany, food security.

İdil Özkan

Linguistic Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2020)
Research Location: Spain

MahmureOzkan2023@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content: Idil's research centers on how language ideologies provide a basis for imagining nation-state, identity, and citizenship in Spain's nationality offer to Sephardi Jews, five hundred years after the Spanish Inquisition. Combining ethnographic research and linguistic anthropological methods, her dissertation looks at how Spanish lawmakers, as well as Sephardic applicants to Spanish citizenship deploy notions of "language" and "culture" in attesting, negating and signaling national identity, lineage, and belonging.

Prapti Panda

Archaeology (Doctoral Student Fall 2023) 
Regional focus: early colonial sites in the Indian Ocean, specifically Portuguese colonies. 

prapti.panda@northwestern.edu
Research Content:

My research is centered on understanding early colonial outposts in the Indian Ocean through historical archaeology. For my doctoral work, I will be focusing on Chaul, a 16th-century Portuguese settlement located on India’s western coast. In analyzing Chaul’s settlement landscape, I ask: how did Portuguese dominion (re)order pre-existing spaces and social relations in the region? Can the conflicts and negotiations that accompany colonial expansion be investigated through the organization of built space at Chaul? By combining archaeological and archival research, I hope to go beyond dominant narratives of the city’s sociocultural elite and explore the everyday experiences of dwelling in a highly stratified and heterogenous settlement.

Daniela Maria Raillard (she/her)

Archaeology (PhD Candidate 2021)
Regional Focus: South American Andes & Amazon

danielaraillard2024@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

For Daniela's dissertation project, she examines the ecologies of ancestors through an archaeology of Chachapoya mortuary landscapes and a community-engaged research design in Peru's northeastern Amazonian Andes. In collaboration with local and descendant communities, she combines land-based knowledge with aerial drone photogrammetry, architecture survey and dendro-archaeology to investigate how ancestral monuments mediated the relationship between people and the environment. She is the lead investigator and co-director for the MAPA-SACHA project, “Medio Ambiente, Paisaje y Arquitectura de los Sitios Ancestrales Chachapoya”, fellow with the University of Arkansas Spatial Archaeology Residential and Online Institute, 2019-2020 fellow with the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at Northwestern, and affiliate with Northwestern's Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Andean Cultures and Histories programs. 

Febi R. Ramadhan

Cultural Anthropology (Arryman Scholar 2018/PhD Candidate 2022)
Regional Focus: Indonesia

FebiRamadhan2025@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

My dissertation research, "How to Do Things with God: The Making of Incommensurability between Same-Sex Sexualities and Islam in Indonesia," examines everyday practices of knowledge production on Islam and same-sex sexualities in Indonesia, particularly at the time of increased hypervisibility of the LGBTQ+ community and discourses on gender and sexual diversity in Indonesia. By combining ethnographic and archival research, I highlight how religious knowledge of same-sex sexualities in the Islamic tradition in Indonesia is intertwined with knowledge-making practices on sexuality that transgress time, space, and scale. My research project aims to contribute to conversations in anthropology, sexuality studies, religious- and Islamic studies, as well as Southeast Asian studies, especially relating to themes on illiberal religious subjects, knowledge production, and the proliferation of conservative movements in everyday settings.

Sari Ratri

Cultural Anthropology (PhD Winter 2025)
Regional Focus: East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

SariRatri2015@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Sari’s reserach interest examines governmental intervention regarding child growth stunting and the knowledge-production embedded in that process, in East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. Her project intends to examine registration and record-keeping responsibilities assigned to local health workers apart from their already underpaid therapeutic work. Through this project, she is particularly interested to understand how dominant cultural ideas about health are conveyed when people talk about and reinterpret quantitative evidence collected from counting birth and death events. She receives funding from the Arrymans Fellows and Scholars, ISRSF Jakarta, as well as the Indonesian Endowment Fund for Education (LPDP), the Ministry of Finance, Indonesia.

Sophie Reilly (she/her)

Archaeology (PhD Candidate 2021)
Regional Focus: Northeastern Andes, Montane Cloud Forest, Chachapoya

SophieReilly2024@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Sophie employs paleoethnobotanical techniques (the analysis of plant remains) to study ancient foodways. Her research specifically investigates the impacts of Inka and Spanish imperialism on food availability and access among Chachapoya communities in the Northeastern Andes from the 14th to 17th century. Her research investigates how communities and households developed strategies of food security to mitigate the impacts of imperial impositions while balancing food preferences. Sophie situates her research within current discussions of food security and food sovereignty and is exploring ways that archaeology can contribute to food justice movements in the present.

To learn more, follow Sophie on  Twitter: @reillydigs

Amrina Rosyada (she/her)

Cultural Anthropology (Arryman Scholar 2019/PhD Candidate 2024)
Regional Focus: Indonesia

amrina@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

 Amrina Rosyada studies the forgotten, the left-behind—both people and things—and how they shape our humanity and understanding of society. Delving into the archives of Margaret Mead, her second-year thesis foregrounded the invisible labor and contributions of native research assistants in anthropology’s whitewashed history. For her dissertation, she is interested in studying the relationship between capitalist ruins and racialization in Indonesia, and how ruins inform us about the nation’s aspirations, memories, and futures. Amrina is enthusiastic about public humanities and has published essays in Sapiens, Inside Indonesia, and The Conversation Indonesia. She also co-founded and manages The Suryakanta, a website that publishes public-friendly reviews of academic books in Indonesian. She has been involved in collections research work in various museums, such as the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the Field Museum. To learn more about her work, follow her on Twitter: @heyamrina_

Aaron Schoenfeldt (he, him)

Cultural Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2021)
Regional Focus: Tulsa, Oklahoma (Creek Nation Territory)

AaronSchoenfeldt2024@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

My research examines the cultural and racial politics that manifest as civic leaders in Tulsa, Oklahoma attempt to transform their town from "Flyover Country" into a "World-Class City"

Anuranjan Sethi

Cultural Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2022)
Regional Focus: India

AnuranjanSethi2024@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Anu is broadly interested in the conflicts at the intersections of law, technology, and governance of the Indian economy. His research focuses on the transmutations of global capital as it negotiates the dichotomy of 'formal' and 'informal' economies in the post-liberalization India. His current project is to understand the political economy dimensions of the Indian government's attempts to promote 'new money technologies' as a tool to tackle the problem of the black-money economy.

Clayton Shuttleworth

Cultural Anthropology (Doctoral Student 2024)

claytonshuttleworth2030@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Clayton's research focuses on language use among queer communities in contemporary Thailand and its relation to novel formations of queer identity in Thailand and the negotiation of tension between local and global forms of queerness and senses of queer belonging. 

Key terms: kathoey, phet, queerness, gender and sexuality, Thailand and Thai language, identity formation, local and global queer belonging

Atmaezer Hariara Simanjuntak

Cultural Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2022)
Regional Focus: West Kalimantan, Indonesia

hariara.simanjuntak@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Ara's research tracks the legacies of colonial plantations in the Global South and how they emerge in the present both ideologically and materially. Combining ethnographic and archival research, he argues that deciphering the plantation logic remains critical to understand violent underdevelopment processes in postcolonial nation-states. This was made possible through the plantation's ability to create and manage differently valued environments, bodies, and social relations, which, in turn, sustain capitalist accumulation. Ara is also interested in the political economy of financial systems, multispecies relations, and emerging forms of hope and morality among indigenous laborers in West Kalimantan, Indonesia

To learn more, follow Ara on Twitter: @arasimanjuntakk

Dilpreet Singh Basanti

Archaeology (PhD Candidate 2017)
Regional Focus: Africa

DilpreetSingh2020@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Dil is an archaeologist who researches death, tradition, family, and globalization across cultures. He currently works on the kingdom of Aksum (50-800) in the northern Horn of Africa. His dissertation uses bioarchaeological analysis/forensic taphonomy, isotopic analysis, micro-CT histology, and NAA to reconstruct the social life of death and how it transforms through the globalizations of the maritime Silk Road. Dil also collaborates on multiple other research and community projects in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.

Mounica Sreesai (She/Her)

Cultural Anthropology (Doctoral Student 2022)
Regional Focus: India

mounicasreesai@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content: Mounica's research interests lie in labor, gender, caste, capitalist relations, inequalities, politics, and social/political movements/mobilizations. She is currently interested in the subjectivities of working-class women participating in labor unions and movements consequential to the inherently gendered and unequal world of work. More specifically, how they reconstruct, navigate and negotiate these spaces. Her research focuses on their lived experiences of political participation and assertion, i.e., the conception, articulation, and performance of sisterhood networks, solidarities, and identities. Her project explores how they articulate (and the various forms this takes) work, labor, and struggle, and through the process, interrogate and transform them in the intertwined spaces of unions and movements, workplaces, and intimate-familial spheres. She probes how their presence and work alter the characteristics and culture of unions. Her attempt is to situate them in the intersection of labor and feminist studies by examining the emancipatory possibilities they see for themselves as women and as workers and how their membership in unions equips them to conceive of and articulate sociopolitical change.

Craig Stevens (he/him)

Archaeology (PhD Candidate 2023)
Regional Focus: Liberia, London

craigstevens2025@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Transcultural Black identity formation in the Back-to-Africa movement; African and African Diasporic solidarity via expressive and material cultures.

Keegan Terek (he/him)

Linguistic Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2019)
Regional Focus: Amman, Jordan

KeeganTerek2016@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Keegan's dissertation research examines contemporary Arabic-language discourse around non-normative gender and sexuality - particularly as it shapes and is deployed in humanitarian work related to forced migration - through ethnographic engagement with LGBTQ refugees and activists in Amman, Jordan.

Elijah Watson

Biological Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2024)
Regional Focus:

elijahwatson2025@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Elijah's research broadly focuses on maternal and child health, with a particular interest in maternal stress, child growth and development, infant feeding, and food and water insecurity.

Tabor Whitney (she/her)

Biological Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2021)
Regional Focus: Veracruz, Mexico (Huasteco, Otomí, Totonaca, and the Olmec territories)

TaborWhitney2025@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

My research assesses habitat degradation and its impact on the overall health and wellbeing of endangered non-human primates. Specifically, I am interested in how shifts in the quality of the environment are reflected in hosts’ gut microbiomes and inflammation responses. I plan to expand the use of the gut microbiome as a conservationist tool.

 To learn more, visit Tabor's Google Scholar | Twitter: @tabor_whitney

Xinyi (Mackenzie) Wu

Linguistic Anthropology (Doctoral Student 2024)
Regional Focus: China/Hong Kong

xinyiwu2029@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Language ideology, linguistic nationalism, language and ethnicity,  language and semiotics, mediatization, language and gender, youth studies

Jin Xiong (Portia)

Cultural Anthropology JD/PhD (PhD Candidate 2023)
Regional Focus: China

JinXiong2023@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Jin Xiong (aka Portia) is a student of the PhD/JD joint program at Northwestern University. As a sociocultural anthropologist, she has broad interest in areas including im/mobilities, family, childhood, development, gender, sexuality, feminism, medical anthropology and anthropology of law. Specifically, her doctoral project looks at how im/mobilities shape and reshape rising China's childhood and family through the lens of the lived experiences of rural Liushou Ertong (Left-behind Children) in central China, and how global legal discourses such as human rights and children's rights unfold in poorly resourced rural communities. For her, anthropology and law are Yin and Yang (united opposites) in the sense that the former pushes people to explore the complexities of human life while the latter requires the art of "less is more".

He Zhu

Cultural (Doctoral Student Fall 2023)
Regional focus: China

hezhu2028@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content: Chinese post-90s fashion designers who study abroad to learn under the western fashion system, and how they are involved in the global fashion market by relying on China’s emerging internet-based fashion industry, and how cultural transnationalism has shaped the local creative industry in post-socialist China.