DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

Aseel Abulhab (she/her)

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

aseel.abulhab@northwestern.edu
Research Content:

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

Michael Angland

Cultural Anthropology (Doctoral Student 2020)
Regional Focus: Chicago, United States (Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi)

MichaelAngland2026@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

My doctoral project explores the relationship between ethnoracial subjectivity, security and the material landscape in two historically Irish American neighbourhoods on the southwest side of Chicago: Beverly and Mount Greenwood. The project asks three main questions. Firstly, how do different groups of people see security as encoded in the material landscape? Secondly, what role do material landscapes play in ethnoracial subject formation in the US? Thirdly, how can we think about European ethnic identitarian production in the contemporary US through a critical race lens that goes beyond “symbolic ethnicity”?

website: www.michaelangland.com

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

Jacob Aronoff

PhD 2022
Regional Focus:

Research Content:

Developmental plasticity and life history theory, quantifying brain energetics using ultrasound, developing a field-friendly cell culture method for studying inflammatory regulation

Bobbie Benavidez (she/her)

Biological Anthropology (Doctoral Student 2019)
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.

Sarah Breiter (she/her)

Archaeology (PhD Candidate 2020)
Regional Focus: East Anglia, Suffolk, Bury St. Edmunds

SarahBreiter2017@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

I explore the environmental ideologies of the feudal to capitalist transition through standing buildings.

To learn more, see her project website: East Anglia Building Landscapes

Anna Brown

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

Research Content:

Gender expression through material belongings and how Spanish colonization may have shifted these dynamics or practices; iconography of late post-classical ceramics and spindle whorls of Mesoamerica.  

Austin Bryan

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

AustinBryan2025@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Federalism, the East African Federation, and the development of a new territory of freedom

Margaret Butler (she/her)

Biological Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2020)
Regional Focus: Chicagoland, Illinois, USA: Traditional homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires, the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa; as well as the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk

MargaretButler2023@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Margaret's research focuses on postpartum health, specifically related to human lactation. Applying mixed methods and a biosocial approach, her dissertation research examines the relationship between breastfeeding and postpartum depression among Chicagoland birthing parents participating in an on-going, hospital-based study. In addition to her graduate studies, Margaret became a certified lactation counselor in 2018 and is an active member of the Chicago Region Breastfeeding Task Force.

To learn more, visit Maggie's website | Twitter: @bioanthmags

Ca’la Connors

Biological Anthropology (Doctoral Student 2022)
Regional Focus:

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 Candidate 2019)
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.

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.

Foroogh Farhang

Cultural Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2018)
Regional Focus: Middle East, Iran

forooghfarhang2015@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Social suffering, post-war trauma, ethnic/religious minorities

My research broadly examines the shifting governance of land and bodies and changing categories of identification for displaced people in the face of ongoing and exacerbating flows of migration in the Middle East. It does so by merging migration studies, humanitarian studies, and historical political economy. My dissertation project primarily focuses on the economic and ethical dimensions of Syrians’ quests for a proper burial following the 2011 mass migration of Syrians to Lebanon. It looks at how the scarcity of burial spaces in Lebanon, in conjunction with increasing restrictions on crossing the Lebanon-Syria border, have mobilized legal and illegal networks of Syrians’ traveling dead within Lebanon and on the route from Lebanon to Syria.

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/MPH (Doctoral Student 2020)
Regional Focus: United States, United Kingdom, Haiti

ggerlin@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

I am a PhD/MPH student & Science in Human Culture Cluster Fellow, working around issues related to psychiatric disease & disablement, identity politics, knowledge-production economies, and implementation science. I am crafting a multi-sited dissertation project that critically engages aspects and consequences of custodial care for psychiatric consumers, survivors, and ex-patients who have lost (or ''forfeited"), and are trying to recover, the ability to participate fully and freely in the world.

James Gibb (he/him/his)

Biological Anthropology (Doctoral Student 2021)

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.

Sindhu Hargyono

Cultural Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2019)
Regional Focus:

sindhunata.hargyono@northwestern.edu
Research Content:

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!

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 (Doctoral Student 2020)
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.

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

Elizabeth Koselka (she/her)

Biological Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2019)
Regional Focus: Spain

ElizabethKoselka2022@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Drawing from a broad interest in biosocial pathways that produce health disparities, Elizabeth’s dissertation research explores how social pressure to fit into society impacts young immigrants’ eating practices and health in Spain.

Keegan Krause (he/him)

Biological Anthropology (Doctoral Student 2020)
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

Jackson Krause (he/him)

Archaeology (Doctoral Student 2021)
Metzabok Valley region of the Selva Lacandona, Chiapas, México

jacksonkrause2027@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

My dissertation research focuses on systems of water management, ecology, and power at the Late Preclassic Maya site of Noh K'uh, Chiapas, México. I'll be using geoarchaeology and spatial analysis to look at the ways in which human-environment relationships are sustained in the rainforest ecosystem of the Lacandon Jungle, particularly through hydrologic structures such as aguadas and canals. My research takes a critical lens to the ways in which archaeology can contribute to Indigenous water sovereignty movements. I am also a Mellon Cluster Fellow with the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research, and am an advocate for non-exploitative community-driven archaeology within Indigenous communities. I have been working with the collaborative Metzabok Archaeological Project since 2016.

Eli Kuto (he/him)

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

Research Content:

Andrew Leith (he/him)

Archaeology (Doctoral Student 2021)

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.

Jennifer Lupu

PhD 2023
Regional Focus: US

JenniferPorter-Lupu2023@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Historical archaeology; 19th and 20th century urban US; patent and proprietary medicine; health and healing; embodiment; sex work; queer theory; multivocality; public and community archaeology; marginalized and underrepresented histories; space and landscape

Paula Maia (she/her)

Biological Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2018)

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.

Shelby Mohrs (she/her)

Archaeology (Doctoral Student 2020)
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.  

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.

Vanessa Watters Opalo

PhD 2022
Regional Focus: West Africa, Ghana, Togo

VanessaOpalo2013@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Economy and value; Social welfare; Anthropology of religion; Ethics; Catholicism and Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity

Hafsa Oubou

Cultural Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2018)
Regional Focus: Western Europe, Belgium

houbou@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

I examine how the intersection of education, religion, and race in public schools shapes religious and ethnic minorities in Belgium. After the 2016 attacks in Brussels, the teaching of Islam in public schools in francophone Belgium has become a point of contention, leading to a growing suspicion towards teachers of Islam and a heated debate among political parties to remove classes of religion from public schools. Using ethnographic methods from fieldwork in Brussels, I explore the controversies regarding teaching Islam in public education as a way to examine the question of Islam in Europe today.

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. 

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.

Julia Perillo

Linguistic (Doctoral Student Fall 2023)  
Regional Focus: Argentina

Research Content:

Italian immigrants in Argentina, to contextualize Argentina’s “whiter” national identity.

Ashish Premkumar

Cultural Anthropology (PhD Summer 2023)
Regional Focus:

Research Content:

The focus of Ashish's research is on the issues of risk, stigma, and care associated with substance use during pregnancy. He has additional interests in the sociopolitical afterlives of biomedical studies, particularly randomized controlled trials.

Haley Ragsdale

Biological Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2020)
Regional Focus: Cebu, Philippines

HaleyRagsdale2023@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Haley's research centers on the evolution of human pregnancy and the placenta. She is primarily interested in how mother, placenta, and offspring negotiate energetic investment, resource exchange, and immune tolerance in different environmental contexts. She applies a parent-offspring conflict framework to maternal-fetal communication and the regulation of metabolism in both mother and offspring across the life course(s). In addition, Haley uses an evolutionary, comparative lens to interrogate why humans suffer from pregnancy complications more than any other mammal.

To learn more, visit Haley's Website | Researchgate Profile | Twitter: @bioanth_rags

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.

Kaelin Rapport (he/him)

Medical Anthropology/MPH (PhD Candidate 2020)
Research Location: Milwaukee (Millioke), US

KaelinRapport2022@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Kaelin's research explores the phenomenological experiences of penal supervision, the negative health consequences of involvement with the US criminal legal system for Black communities, and the dialectic relationship between racial capitalism and carceral practices/policy.

 Key Terms:  Health/Medicine; Inequality; Race/Ethnicity; Embodiment; Post/Colonialism; Biopolitics; Racial Capitalism; Surveillance; Carcerality; Temporality; Spatialization

Sari Ratri

Cultural Anthropology (Arryman Scholar 2017/PhD Candidate 2020)
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/Doctoral Student 2020)
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"

Emily Schwalbe (she/her)

PhD 2023
Regional Focus: South Carolina Lowcountry (Kusso, Yamassee, Santee Territories), United States

EmilySchwalbe2024@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

My current research explores the relationship between water and inequality, focusing on how people use and experience shared waterways differently by employing 17th-19th c South Carolina rice plantations as case studies. To this end, my dissertation project examines the idea of a plantation waterscape in the Charleston area by combining terrestrial archaeological sites with underwater archaeology to understand how plantation colonies functioned. In this study I conceptualize plantation waterways and their associated infrastructure as connectors rather than barriers to investigate the ways engineered landscapes facilitated and challenged production, surveillance, and communication on and between Lowcountry plantations.

To learn more, follow Emily on Twitter: @Salty_Archy  |  Instagram: @salty_archy

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.

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:

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 (Doctoral Student 2020)
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.

Stephen Sullivan (he/him)

Cultural Anthropology (PhD Candidate 2019)
Regional Focus: Brooklyn, New York (Lenapehoking)

StephenSullivan2016@u.northwestern.edu
Research Content:

Stephen’s primary research interest focuses on the relationship between public space, social movements, and the techno-sensory in urban United States. His dissertation is a sound ethnography of anti-gentrification dissent against displacement and surveillance. 

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.

Silvio Ernesto Mirabal Torres

Biological MPH/PHD (Doctoral Student Fall 2023)
Regional Focus: (Cuba and US)

Research Content:

The evolution of the immune system and the influence of the biocultural environment in its development, specifically the immune disbalances that cause inflammation, as well as the effect that that inflammation has on their growth, development and aging.

Elijah Watson

Biological Anthropology (Doctoral Student 2020)
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

Jin Xiong (Portia)

Cultural Anthropology (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

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.