Graduate Students
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Rebecca Coffield In 2017 I received my bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Louisville. During my undergraduate career, I took several Anthropology electives that sparked my interest on the topic. I’ve always been fascinated with forensic analysis and the identification of historical artifacts, which helped anchor my decision to study Archaeology. I have a strong interest in the curatorial/analytical processes, which I intend to make my career goal. |
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Sarah Dandurand In May of 2020, I graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. During my time as an undergraduate, I developed a fondness of Archaeology, especially zooarchaeology, and Sociocultural Anthropology. It always fascinated me that no matter what part of the world people have settled in and made communities out of they have used animals and incorporated them into their culture in some capacity. After I graduate with my Master's degree in Anthropology, I wish to work in an archaeological museum, coordinating exhibits that display artifacts of archaeological significance, or working on an archaeological excavation as the main zooarchaeologists on site. |
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Stephanie Dooley Research interests: My research interests include ceramic analysis, historical archaeology and GIS.
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Jordan Durham My primary research interests are lithic technology, experimental archaeology, and migration patterns of modern humans. My area of focus is the colonization of Japan and the earliest sites of occupation. Other research interests include paleoenvironmental reconstruction, cultural/technological evolution, and human dispersal.
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Emily Frazier Research Interests: Biological archaeology, forensic anthropology, paleopathology, and skeletal frailty research investigating skeletal markers of health, stress, and lifestyle. Personal Interests: I enjoy traveling, cats, sriracha, and spending time with my wonderful and supporting wife Danielle by playing video games and watching movies together. |
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Isaac C. Garvin My main research interests include lithic technology, human origins, experimental archaeology, and Paleoindian archaeology. My personal interests include fishing, hiking, and freemasonry. |
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Misty Lane Kupka Research interest: My research interests in the MA Anthropology program are: humanitarian aid, voluntourism and other service/learning abroad programs, environmental justice and political ecology, specifically development pressures and land dispossession. |
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Kat O Connell As an undergrad, I focused on Archaeology, specifically historical and cemetery archaeology. I participated in field school at Farmington Historic Home and worked in the archaeology lab on the Eastern Cemetery project. I have spent my time since undergrad working in various fields, including teaching Judaic studies for 9 years. I also work with my mortician husband in his funeral home, and am busy raising my four children. My research interests include skeletal forensics, cemetery archaeology, thanatology, and indigenous forensic archaeology. |
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Zack Shelton My research interests are inequality, class, and culture, and I plan on doing my thesis on educational inequality in Appalachia.
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Dustin Smith
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Devin Stephens My main research interests include the archaeology of Aegean Prehistory, namely the political, cultural, and economic relations between the Mycenaeans and Minoans. Other research interests include classical archaeology, the archaeology of Greece, the anthropology of Greek religion, the archaeology of human burial in the Mediterranean, and the incorporation of social theory within the field of archaeology. |
Former Graduate Students |
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Neha Angal
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In 2016 I received a Bachelor’s degree in English from IU-Southeast. I decided to take the writing skills I had developed and explore the social sciences. My interest in the machinations of culture led me to the University of Louisville Anthropology department, where I focused my Master’s work on issues of sustainability and the environment. I wanted to understand how various cultures conceive of the human relationship to the environment, why so many societies function unsustainably, and what impact sustainability efforts might have upon socio-cultural systems. |
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David Hoefer |
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Tyler Short In December 2017 I had the honor of traveling to Rome for two trainings that involved nearly twenty youth from around the world. As a member of Sustainable Agriculture of Louisville (SAL), I represented the US Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA), a coalition of grassroots and grassroots-support organizations dedicated to realizing the human right to food sovereignty by ending poverty, rebuilding local economies, and asserting democratic control over food systems. |
Robyn Valenzuela In the fall of 2014, I began my PhD program in Cultural Anthropology at Indiana University, with outside PhD minors in Human Rights and Gender Studies. My dissertation research examines transnational family separation and reunification between the United States and Mexico. This separation often entails the convergence of Immigration enforcement, child welfare, and Family Law systems, as well as institutional networks involved in transnational reunification cases. My study engages in ethnographic and archival research in Chicago, Illinois and Indiana, examining how noncitizen Mexican parents, child protection workers (in the U.S and Mexico), attorneys, and Family Law judges experience and navigate the child protection system domestically and transnationally. In so doing, it considers how bordering practices, as an effect of state surveillance and power, are enacted on families regardless of their proximity to the physical U.S-Mexico border. Ironically, this was a project I had conceived prior to the campaign or election of Donald Trump. However, this project has taken on a new significance in our current political climate. |