Adriana Abreu is in her second year being part of a research team, co-coordinated by Professor Brondizio, carrying out fieldwork for the project CNH2-L: Integrating Cross-scale Socio-Ecological Feedbacks in Freshwater. This project investigates the challenges of pirarucu management through an integrated approach, examining the effects of cross-scale, socio-ecological interactions on the dynamics of freshwater fisheries. This summer, they will apply the project’s institutional analysis protocol in about 50 communities. She also published her co-written book chapter, titled Social Conflicts and Fishery Governance Systems in the Estuary and Coast of Pará, Amazonia, Brazil, in the book Blue Justice: Small-Scale Fisheries in a Sustainable Ocean Economy edited by Jentoft, S., Chuenpagdee, R., Bugeja Said, A., Isaacs, M. Also, Adriana will be conducting feasibility research this summer in Brazil thanks to the generous support of the Skomp Feasibility Fellowship.

Emily Van Alst has recently accepted a tenure track position at Washington State University in the Department of Anthropology. Her new position starts in Fall 2023.

Hayden Bernard is this year’s winner of a Mary Suzanne Savage Scholarship for Archaeological Fieldwork. Hayden is an undergraduate anthropology major here at IU and will be participating in an Advanced Field School at the Center for American Archaeology this summer, focusing on a Late Woodlands site near Kampville, IL. His work will be centered on the faunal remains at the site. The Mary Suzanne Savage Scholarship is generously supported by Sally Rudolph, in memory of her sister, Mary Suzanne Savage, an avid field archaeologist.

Jack Bishop will be going on to work at Statue of Liberty National Monument as a Park Ranger this summer.

Elissa Booras is collaborating on a journal article this summer about the Indianapolis SNAP retailer environment, continuing the work of one facet of the Indianapolis-wide Food Comida Rawl project she joined in 2020. She will also continue working at the Woolery Mill Farmer’s Market in Bloomington this summer as their SNAP Administrator, where she oversees the SNAP doubling program, handles Market Bucks transactions, and applauds for that week’s musical guest when the crowds thin out.

Ben Bridges received several grants and awards this past year connected to his ongoing dissertation research on sustainable arts in Southeast Alaska. The Jacobs Funds from the Whatcom Museum and the William Slaymaker Fellowship from IU supported ethnographic fieldwork surrounding cedar bark harvesting and cedar-related arts in 2022. This material helped ground the Collins course he taught in the fall, “Art at the Edge of Environmental Change,” for which he received the Collins Teaching Award. During this same semester, he also received a College Travel Award to fund his visit to the American Folklore Society Annual Meeting, at which he won the Warren E. Roberts Prize for his paper titled, “Visualizing Alaska Native Sovereignty in Juneau’s Public Art.” In spring 2023, Ben returned to Alaska for continued fieldwork with support from The American Folklore Society Graduate Fieldwork Grant and the Phillips Fund for Native American Research from the American Philosophical Society. As he wraps up his fieldwork, a grant from the Edward H. and Rosamond B. Spicer Foundation will help him organize and donate his materials to local archives in Southeast Alaska. Then during the 2023–24 school year, he will immerse himself in writing with the College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Research Fellowship. Ben is very grateful for the support from these various funding institutions as well as his dissertation co-chairs, Dr. Sarah Osterhoudt and Dr. Jason Baird Jackson.

Avanti Chhatre’s article titled “Performative Politics in Digital Spaces: An Analysis of Lokshahiri (People’s Poetry) on YouTube” was published in Literary Cultures and Digital Humanities in India (Routledge, 2022), a volume edited by Dr. Nishat Zaidi and Dr. A. Sean Pue.

Annalee J Deabel has completed all Introduction 200 Anthropology courses and will be taking food courses in the ancient world and food genetics next year in the Anthropology department. She also made it onto the executive Dean’s List for Fall 2022.

Over the past year Carley Divish has made progress towards completing her degrees at IU in multiple areas. She attended a conference in Lisbon, Portugal to present her research from the past few field seasons on Living Museums in the Sea. This was fully funded by the Hutton Honors College and the College of Arts and Sciences. From there, she made that presentation into a senior thesis she turned into the Individual Majors Program to complete her degree in Underwater Archaeology. She finished her degrees in Anthropology, Classical Civilizations, a minor in Environment and Sustainability and a certificate in Underwater Resource Management. She used the year to become a PADI Divemaster and is now able to lead scuba dives at facilities across the world, opening up a new field of industry for her after completion of her degrees. She has been accepted into a field school in the Dominican Republic to follow up on research begun last year on a shipwreck whose identity is still unknown. After that, she plans to attend the University of Southampton to complete their masters’ degree program in Maritime Archaeology.

This past year, during the spring semester, Alece Doctor (an anthropology major and linguistics minor), wrote a research proposal as part of her Sociolinguistics course. She wrote it on the generational uses of intimate language. During her studies, she realized that human intimacy is an area of study that needs to be strengthened; in so doing, we might be able to better prevent intimate violence and better help individuals who experience violence and trauma in intimacy. Although it was an assignment, Alece imagined the ways further studies into the topic could benefit communities throughout America, and perhaps even globally. She hopes to someday be able to dig into a study similar to the one she envisioned through her research proposal.

Jonas Fos will be studying Yoruba in Nigeria via the Fulbright-Hays Group Project Abroad through Howard University this summer. He has received a summer and academic year FLAS for Yoruba.

Eliza Frenkel presented her research at the 2022 AAA Annual Meeting, which was graciously funded by the REEI center. She will also conduct her feasibility research in Israel and Poland this summer with the generous support from the REEI Mellon Endowment Pre-Dissertation Fellowship, the Skomp Feasibility Fellowship and the Jewish Studies Fellowship. Besides, she was also recently re-elected as an Officer for the Jewish Studies Graduate Student Association.

In the 2022-2023 academic year, Ariana Gunderson served as an Ostrom Workshop Fellow. She will return to the Workshop next year as an Ostrom Workshop Research Award recipient. She was awarded a Norwegian FLAS for 2023-2024 as she won the Christine Wilson Graduate Student Paper Award from the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition, and she secured small event grants from the Association for the Study of Food and Society and the Council for European Studies. Ariana organized a hybrid, interdisciplinary symposium at IU this spring called “Stealing Recipes? Ownership Claims and the Culinary Commons” (the recording of which is available here). Within the department, Ariana co-chaired the AGSA Symposium committee, organized a series of events supporting graduate student participation in the AAA Annual Meetings, and hosted Ethnographia, a writing encouragement group.

Gerardo (Jerry) Hernandez has presented at two different symposia/conferences this semester at IU, AGSA Symposium and Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society (CRRES). He will also be presenting at a third conference this summer in Boston MA, for the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS). His MA research that he has been presenting on has been in collaboration with Felege Hiywot Center, a youth-led STEM agriculture farm located by downtown Indianapolis and IU, Bloomington. His topics include food, identity, and race and how FHC as a center has provided for their urban youth. This research was done in collaboration with IU Anthropology Faculty, Dr. Jennifer Robinson and funding was provided through the Lilly Endowment, one of the world’s largest private philanthropic foundations and among the largest endowments in the United States, founded in 1937. He also served as a research assistant for Dr. Jennifer Robinson at the Felege Hiywot Center for urban youth gardening in Indianapolis. Through the support of his advisors, FHC staff, and funding from the Lilly Endowment ($5000 for summer research 2022), he was able to use this research to include into his MA Food Studies Capstone. After receiving his MA in Food Studies this spring, Jerry will join the IU English Department as a Visiting Lecturer teaching Public Oral Communication. He is very excited to continue his teaching track here at IU!

During the summer of 2022, Yasmin Lord conducted IRES (Independent feasibility) research on the anthropogenic landscape effects influencing endocrinology and gut microbiome in Howler Monkeys (aloutta pa.). In the fall of 2022 through spring 2023, she worked as a Research Lab Assistant in the PEEL LAB. Yasmin was also awarded the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Award in the Fall of 2022 for promoting diversity, equality, and breaking biological normalcies, as featured in the IU Fall newsletter. Additionally, she served as a mentor for the Women in Technology and Black Women in STEM program(s) throughout the Fall of 2022 to Spring 2023. Lastly, Yasmin led the Introduction to Bio-anthropology AI course during the Fall 2022 to Spring 2023 term; she helped to build and create the bio anthropology lab guide/course folder for future B200 courses.

Meg Morley returned from her Fulbright-funded research in Egypt in August 2022, and she has been writing her dissertation with the support of an American Dissertation Fellowship from the American Association of University Women. She wrote a book chapter, which will appear in the forthcoming Routledge Companion to the Anthropology of Performance.

Sarah Muckerheide presented a poster at the 2023 SHA conference in Lisbon, Portugal on her archaeological investigations on an incoming mid-16th century shipwreck in the Dominican Republic. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Sarah is graduating with Highest Distinction with degrees in Anthropology and Underwater Archaeology, minors in Biology and Spanish, a Certificate in Underwater Resource Management, and a Hutton Honors Notation. She has made the decision to pursue a graduate degree in Anthropology at IU while continuing her research on 16th century shipwrecks.

Tolga Ozata presented his paper titled “Resistance at Last Sight: Necroaesthetic Struggle in Sacrificial Political Deaths in Turkey” at the 2022 American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in Seattle, WA. In addition, he has published a book review in Allegra Lab regarding Deniz Yonucu’s “Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul.” The review can be accessed here.

Malia Piazza has received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to complete a twelve-month fellowship at IU as a “Common Themes in Reproductive Diversity” (CTRD) Pre-Doctoral Fellow. Over the past year, she presented preliminary data analyses on antidepressant-associated sexual and romantic side effects at four conferences: the American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Meeting, the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health (ISSWSH) Annual Meeting, IU’s Annual Animal Behavior Conference, and the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS) Annual Conference. This summer, she will be conducting multi-sited research to explore the intersection of sexuality and rehabilitative therapies and their surrounding sociocultural contexts. This research will be funded by the NIH, IU Global’s Pre-Dissertation Travel Grant, and the David C. Skomp Feasibility Fellowship. Malia has accepted an invitation to become an Irsay Fellow for the upcoming 2023-2024 academic year to continue focusing on relationships between sexuality and healthcare.

Lauren Amber Rohn is in the Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Experience (ASURE) program, with the mentorship of Dr. Julie Van Voorhis and Ancient Art curator Juliet Graver Istrabadi, who have had the opportunity to create an exhibition in the Eskenazi Museum of Art titled Life and Legend: Storytelling and Greek Pottery. The exhibition features not only a rich variety of vessels and imagery but also delves into the daily lives of ancient Greeks and how they utilized painted pottery in their everyday lives. Divided into four themes, the exhibition discusses many facets of ancient Greek life through the pottery and images painted onto the vessels. The curation of objects, writing of labels and wall didactics, and even placement of the objects within the space were all done by students. The opening reception for Life and Legend: Storytelling and Greek Pottery was held on May 4th, 2023. The exhibition was created by Adam Baron, Essay Biniam, Sophie Bruhn, Riley Byron, Emily “Remy” Caufield, Allison Fredenberg, Naomi Grossman, Madelyn Haley, Grace Harmon, Sophi Hayes, Caitlyn Kulczycki, Sanjana Penmathsa, Joel Robertson, Lauren Rohn, and with the assistance of Dr. Julie Van Voorhis and Juliet Graver Istrabadi.

Rachel Seymour presented her research at the AAA in 2022; her presentation was titled, “Applied Ethnography Leading to Curriculum Interventions in Introductory Computer Science Classrooms.” Rachel received the Virginia Smith Scholarship for the 2022-2023 Academic Year, and she also received SKOMP funding for feasibility research for Summer 2023.

Nikolina Zenovic is finishing up the 2022-2023 academic year as a FLAS Fellow. She is grateful to be continuing her studies of Modern Greek with the support of a FLAS Fellowship for the 2023-2024 academic year. Nikolina’s presentation of her research at the 2022 AAA Annual Meeting was graciously funded by the Tobias Center for Innovation in International Development. Additionally, she will be conducting feasibility research in Greece this summer with the generous support of IU Global’s Pre-Dissertation Travel Grant, the REEI Mellon Endowment Pre-Dissertation Fellowship, and the Skomp Feasibility Fellowship.