Brian Bardy recently published an archaeology article: “A Rare Upper Valley Dalton Point Found in Cook County, Illinois” in Illinois Antiquity, Volume 57, Issue 4, 2022, Illinois Association for Advancement of Archaeology (IAAA).

Ian Clark is a 2011 Anthropology program graduate and just has become a Federal Archaeologist with the Natural Resource Conservation Service. Ian wishes everyone luck who is a graduate or will someday graduate from our program. He believes that it was a good choice as far as he has seen.

Glynn Custred earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology at IU where he studied linguistic anthropology under Carl Voeglin, the arts and anthropology under Alan Merriam, and the history of anthropology under David Bidney, as well as folklore in the Department of Folklore, all in the context of the four fields of Anthropology, subjects which he later taught in the Anthropology Department at California State University East Bay in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Glynn did his field work in the Southern highlands of Peru about which he has written, as well a book titled “A History of Anthropology as a Holistic Science.” Most recently he wrote a review of R. A. Harris’s “Linguistic Wars” in which he recalls his experience as a student at IU. He has also written an article on the remains found at Angel Mounds on the Ohio River near Evansville as well as articles and amicus curiae briefs on Kennewick Man and Spirit Cave Man, in the context of repatriations and NAGPRA. The book review can be found here. Glynn mentioned that if anyone would like to see what he has said about NAGPRA and reparations, he will send, on request, a copy of talk he gave recently at San José State University.

Robert Graber is editing a forthcoming volume of essays by the late Robert L. Carneiro, known especially for his circumscription theory of state origins: Carneiro: The Concise Evolutionary Essays (Berghahn Books, 2024).

After graduating with a BA in Anthropology from IU in 2020, Jared Greenberg went on to complete his master’s in food studies from Chatham University’s Falk School of Sustainability. The food studies campus was on a farm north of Pittsburgh. The agricultural spaces made it an incredible space to learn and experiment with food and agriculture. The program tackled food with a focus on social justice movements and sustainable practices along with an emphasis on business, supply chains, gastronomy, and much more. His thesis on cookbooks, specifically cocktail books, looked at every aspect of recipes from how they are written to the photography to recipe testing. Jared is now a Recipe Development Associate at Home Chef where he gets to edit recipes, style food, and taste test new meals!

Nic Hartmann started a position as Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at University of Iowa, where he teaches courses for UI’s Museum Studies Certificate for undergraduates. 

Wiley Jettpace gives a shout-out to one of the nation’s best Anthropology departments! He graduated with a BA in Anthropology back in May 2018. He ended up pursuing an MS in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) at IUPUI, which he completed in December of 2021. Wiley informally specialized in UX research (both quantitative and qualitative) and product management. During the program he had internships in UX, product management, product marketing, and CX. His first full time position after the program was with Stanley Security in Fishers as a product marketer supporting several digital products, with a functional specialization in research and insights. Now, Wiley works as a PMM at a construction software startup in Chicago called Gearflow. He uses his Anthropology and Psychology skills every single day.

When interviewing for marketing, product, UX, and human factors positions, he routinely has interviewers curious and excited about his anthropology background (particularly outside of the Indianapolis metro). He emphatically recommends these routes to any current undergrad in the major.

Grace Anne Nelson is working as a behavior technician for primates, and was a research assistant at a field station in Costa Rica with spider monkeys and capuchins.

Justin Otten (BA ‘02) is the Director of Strategic Initiatives and Senior Aide to the Dean in the IU School of Public Health-Bloomington, helping run dean’s office operations and strategic school projects. Dr. Otten is also an adjunct instructor with the IU Robert F. Byrnes Russian and East European Institute (REEI), given his background (Peace Corps and doctoral research) in the former Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe.

Lisa Pawloski is now the Associate Dean for International Programs and a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alabama. She has been at UA for 6 years after spending 18 years at George Mason University in the College of Health and Human Services and a year on the Mason Korea campus. Lisa loves her job as she gets to help faculty and students study, work, and do research all around the world. Her research involves biocultural factors that impact nutrition and health. Most recently, she has been doing research in Thailand.

Audrey Ricke is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Anthropology Department at IUPUI. Her book, Oktoberfest in Brazil: Domestic Tourism, Sensescapes, and German Brazilian Identity, will be available with the University of Alabama Press in June 2023. It is based on work with German Brazilian communities in southern Brazil and focuses on the sensory experiences and emotions surrounding domestic tourism associated with German Brazilian cultural heritage, including gardening, folk dance, and the largest Oktoberfest in Brazil in Blumenau, Santa Catarina. The book features a framework to analyze the multiple and layered social meanings that are produced through sensory experiences, emotions, and other aesthetic features within and across different spaces and interactions. Such a framework has applications for understanding the processes of identity negotiation and human-environment relations and for tourism and event management, including the design of tourism and other spaces. The ethnographic research for this project was supported in part by the IU Department of Anthropology David C. Skomp Summer Research Feasibility Award, IU Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies Tinker Foundation and Mendel Foundation research grants, and the IUB Office of the Vice President for International Affairs, Office of Research, and University Graduate school travel grants. Oktoberfest in Brazil is accompanied by a teaching and learning guide. The guide has discussion and fieldwork activities for each chapter that collectively provide experience in different data collection and analysis skills for ethnographic projects. Audrey is also actively involved in virtual international exchanges; recently collaborating with faculty at the Colegio de Estudios Superiores de Administración in Bogotá, Colombia on a community-based ecotourism project as well as with faculty at Newcastle University in England on an ethnographic project about identity expression and negotiation. She is chair of the American Anthropological Association’s Teaching Anthropology Interest Group, which is part of the General Anthropology Division. In 2022, she was invited by a scholar at the Universidade Federal da Bahia to help co-organize the inaugural meeting of the International Working Group on Teaching and Learning Anthropology, which was launched at the Reunião Brasileira de Antropologia (Brazilian Anthropology Meetings).

Bethany Romanowski is a 1999 graduate of IU with a double major in Anthropology and German. In 2002, she earned an MA in Social Science from the University of Chicago. Since 2004, she has worked in museums as a collections registrar. She has been the Head Registrar at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum since 2012. In 2022, a colleague and Bethany published a book titled, “Inventorying Cultural Heritage Collections: A Guide for Museums and Historical Societies” on the topic of museum collection inventories. A path to the book description can be found here. 

Amanda Rosenfried is a wife to Ernesto, mom to Jake and Norah and fur mom to Manolo, Max, Marley, and Hunter. She is homeschooling her children ages 10 & 12, using Classical Conversations and has for the past 4 years. Amanda also works for IHelpMoms.com as the Expert Experience Coordinator. She lives in Florida and loves going to the beach, hanging with friends, and going to SeaWorld!

Julienne Rutherford (Ph.D., Biological Anthropology, 2007) was appointed Professor and the John & Nell Mitchell Chair for Pediatric Nursing in the College of Nursing at the University of Arizona in August 2022. She is a biological anthropologist whose work integrates bioanthropological theory with biomedical science. For 20 years, she has sustained a program of research exploring the intrauterine environment as a biosocial determinant of health. She studies how maternal life history and lived experience shape this earliest developmental setting, and how, in turn, the intrauterine environment influences growth, health, and development across the life course and across generations. Her innovative marmoset monkey research comprises the bulk of her 16 years of continuous federal funding as PI/MPI and Co-I (total federal awards >$6M). As Principal Investigator (PI) she designed a “Womb to Womb” NICHD-funded R01 study of marmosets to determine how prenatal influences shape female reproductive development and pregnancy outcomes across generations. She and her team have shown that in the marmoset, a mother’s own birth weight and litter size are associated with her pregnancy outcomes in adulthood and the reproductive development of her daughters. She is currently funded as an MPI on an NIA-funded R56 study of marmoset developmental genetics. These studies in the marmoset demonstrate the ways maternal health and child outcomes may be shaped by events beyond the reach of individual agency.

Angela Smith (BA Anthropology ‘10) was promoted to Chief, Organizational Transformation at Parallax Advanced Research, a nonprofit research institute advancing innovation across the U.S. science and technology enterprise last year. In July 2022, Angela also joined IU Alumni Association’s Executive Council, where she served as a member at large. She recently returned to Indiana University as Senior Executive Advisor to the Vice President for Student Success in February 2023. In this role, Angela supports the development, implementation, and evaluation of IU’s student success strategy across 7 campuses.

Susan Kirkpatrick Smith was awarded The Kennesaw State University Madhuri And Jagdish N. Sheth Faculty Award for Distinguished International Achievement which recognizes and honors a member of the full-time teaching faculty who has demonstrated excellence in teaching, research and creative activity, and professional service which embodies culturally diverse and pluralistic global perspectives; and effective and innovative teaching practices focused on preparing students to be responsible global leaders. The award highlights the importance of the international dimensions of the awardees’ contributions to their discipline or subject matter.

The human osteology field school she operates in Crete, Greece at the INSTAP Study Center for East Crete was a significant contributing factor to her receiving this award. Her most recent field season just ended, with 2 weeks at INSTAP working with 5 undergraduate students.

LaRonika Thomas (BA, Theatre and Anthropology ‘99) begins her new role as an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Washington College this fall, having served in a visiting role for the past year and a half.  She is a professional dramaturg and theatre-maker who completed her dissertation, “Civic Dramaturgy: Cultural Space, Artistic Labor, and Performances of Urban Planning in 21st Century Chicago,” at the University of Maryland in the fall of 2022.  Her chapter “Temple-Swapping in the City: The Spatial Imaginary and Performances of Place-Making in the Work of Theaster Gates” is in the book Makeshift Chicago: A Century of Theatre and Performance, published by Northwestern University Press.  She lives with her husband in Baltimore, MD.  More information about LaRonika can be found here.

Petronella Vaarzon-Morel (previously Wafer) (M.A. 1986) is immensely grateful for her anthropological education at Indiana University and the opportunity to have taken classes from Dr. Anya Royce, Dr Ray DeMallie and Dr Anthony Seeger, among others. Since returning to Australia, she has worked both as a practicing anthropologist and in the academy. 

Over the past four decades Petronella has undertaken research with Indigenous groups in Australia on Aboriginal land and native title claims, and on environmental, multispecies, cultural heritage and social justice issues. Since 2014 she has also lectured in anthropology at New York University Sydney.

Petronella is currently Co-Director of the Centre for Native Title at ANU and is an Adjunct Visiting Fellow, College of Indigenous Futures Education and the Arts, Charles Darwin University. She is also conducting research with Warlpiri and Anmatyerr people on two native title claims, and she continues to collaborate with Willowra Indigenous community on their Lander River cultural mapping project. 

She has multiple new publications, and her recent book Archival Returns: Central Australia and Beyond (with co-editors L. Barwick, J. Green, Sydney: Sydney University Press) won the 2020 Mander Jones Award from the Australian Society of Archivists.

Stephanie White writes:

“It definitely feels like it’s another lifetime ago that I walked into my first Cultural Anthro class at IU. I was hooked and love the field even to this day. It wasn’t always an easy choice, especially not having pursued higher degrees in Anthro to reapply the knowledge I was acquiring.

I had a twisting career and personal path which led me to jobs in the diagnostics and pharma sectors, to teaching English as a foreign language, volunteering, blog writing, and finally moving abroad to Switzerland where I’ve lived for 23 years. Through my career I held positions in sales/key account management, business development, global marketing, corporate partnering all within the healthcare field. Then, I left to do my Masters at Bocconi in Milan in Int’l Healthcare Mgmt and Economic Policy (MIHMEP). 

All the while, I got married, had a child, became a dog mom and even managed it all with a debilitating and progressive chronic illness since the age of 19.

My current career choice took me into social impact and the luxury fashion industry working for a unique change-maker brand which empowers female refugee artists to lift them up out of poverty through their own talent and hard work. SEP (@sepjordan) means Social Enterprise Project, and has been like a dream come true where I see all the main goal posts of my life across my personal choices of study, to travel experiences, learning languages, to previous jobs and volunteer work - all the way back to and including my BA in Cultural Anthro studies at IU - all this merged together now into 1 place. The universe works magic! It’s kismet!

I get to tell stories all day to open hearts and minds to the plight of nearly 600 women who find themselves as refugees for life. The understanding I gained through my IU studies coupled with my vast career experience and own worldview changes I gained by living in 5 different countries, and learning to speak 4 languages in this lifetime, have all enriched me beyond what I could imagine as a young Hoosier.

I feel like I’m here to be a connector of people. A storyteller. To show compassion and to empower women through cultural understanding and having an open heart. Thank you for the introduction to “other ways of seeing each other” by offering a vast course curriculum in a field I’d never even heard of prior to joining IU! I hope this could inspire anyone thinking about taking a few courses in Anthro let alone going all the way through to PhD and post-doc work. Dr Greenhouse was an incredible example and mentor to me from 1991-95, and I often think of her fondly. 

It was a great experience and I often consider returning to go even further in the field. Thank you for allowing us alums to share our stories. Warmly, Stephanie.”