Graduate Students

	Christian Brawner Undergraduate Degree: UofL B.A. Anthropology (2016) Graduate Degree: UofL M.A. Anthropology (Current) Background: In 2016-2017 I served as an English Teaching Assistant on a Fulbright in Amman, Jordan where I worked with Palestinian refugee students in a U.N.R.W.A. school. After returning to the states in 2017, I served an Americorps year at KentuckianaWorks as a research assistant to the Director of Labor Market Research where I worked on introducing Kentucky's first licensing guides for refugees and immigrants. Other Interests: Currently working on my masters in anthropology where my research interests include neoliberalism, Palestine, ideologies of security, and colonialism. When I'm not reading or writing for class or working with RSOs, I enjoy cooking and spending time with my friends and my adorable cat, Pim.
	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.
	Stephanie Dooley BA, Anthropology Research interests: My research interests include ceramic analysis, historical archaeology and GIS. Profile
	Jordan Durham BA Anthropology & BA History Graduate Teaching Assistant 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.
	Isaac C. Garvin Undergraduate Degree: Berea College B.A. in History (2019) Graduate Degree: UofL M.A. in Anthropology (Current) My main research interests include lithic technology, human origins, experimental archaeology, and Paleoindian archaeology. My personal interests include fishing, hiking, and freemasonry.
	Amira Karaoud Anthropology Research Interest: Evolution of Culture, gender, immigration and refugees, self governed communities and visual anthropology. Profile
	Misty Lane Kupka BA, Anthropology MA, Social Work 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. Profile
	Zack Shelton Anthropology My research interests are inequality, class, and culture, and I plan on doing my thesis on educational inequality in Appalachia. Profile
	Dustin Smith My research so far has been focused on lithic analysis from a project that I have been working on. It's located in the Upper Cumberland region of KY. I unfortunately have yet to find anything diagnostic, so as far as a time range goes, I got nadda. As far as previous work, I have been fortunate enough to work on prehistoric rock shelter sites within Mammoth Cave National Park. As far as interests go, I love museums, cooking and watching documentaries. Profile
	Devin Stephens University of Louisville B.A. Individualized Major in Classical Languages (2019) University of Louisville M.A. in Anthropology (Current) Graduate Teaching Assistant 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
	Neha Angal Biological Anthropology Department alum Neha Angal (M.A. 2016) recently accepted a position as a field interviewer for the Survey Research Center (SRC) at the University of Michigan. Neha is recruiting and enrolling new mothers into a longitudinal study, Baby’s First Years, at area hospitals in New Orleans. The project objective is to assess the role of family background, experiences, income, and access to social services on early child development, through the first three years of life. The SRC is internationally recognized as a leading organization in interdisciplinary and social and behavioral science research. Profile
	Charles Davis Biological Anthropology Research Interests: Evolutionary anthropology, phylogeography, population genetics, molecular anthropology, paleopathology, bioarchaeology, GIS. Profile
	Allan Day BA, English Cultural Anthropology 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. Profile
	Megan Duncanson Biological Anthropology Graduate Teaching Assistant Research Interests: My core interests include physical anthropology, immunology, bioarchaeology, paleopathology, and human osteology. My research interests broadly concern understanding health and disease in past populations, based upon both experimental immunology and bioarchaeological methods. Profile
	Grace Ellis Archaeology Graduate Research Assistant, MA Student Research Interests: Human-environment interactions, spatial analysis, GIS, settlement organization, and landscape archaeology. Profile
	Hannah Gabbard Socio-Cultural Anthropology As a second semester graduate student in the anthropology program. I am still trying to hone in on the area of interest I would like to focus on for my internship. I became interested in urban food, food deserts, and our general understanding of food as Americans during an internship I completed in high school. Profile
	Timothy Heine BS, Business & Economics Biological Anthropology I received a B.S., Business & Economics from the University of Kentucky, then attended the University of Louisville School of Medicine where I was awarded an M.D. in 1988. Currently, I’m working with student colleagues Roxanne Leiter and Megan Duncanson, as well as faculty members Fabian Crespo and Christopher Tillquist, to develop a poster symposium for the 2017 AAPA Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA. I’m the newest [and surely the oldest] graduate student in the UofL Department of Anthropology. [I’d be that tall, lanky man with gray sideburns who frequently looks lost and addled in the departmental hallways.] Profile
	Samantha Holmes BA, Anthropology Originally born in Louisville, Kentucky I received my bachelor’s in Anthropology with a minor in Atmospheric Science from the University at Albany- SUNY in Albany, NY in 2017. Here at UofL I am a first year MA student focusing on Archaeological research. My research interests include religion and ideological shifts in times of social and political transition as well as Ecology, Climate, Paleoenvironment, Pleistocene/Holocene Boundary peoples, Archaeology. Research interests: My area of interest includes the Viking invasion of Ireland particularly how the Irish responded to the new ideas being brought into the country and how those spread across the island.
	David Hoefer MA, Archaeology Archaeology David Hoefer recently completed his master-of-arts (M.A.) degree in anthropology at the University of Louisville. After a successful career as a communications consultant and small-business owner, David decided to pursue a second career in archaeology, as a means of fulfilling a longtime passion for scholarly research and analysis. His thesis defense, on the evidence for economic agency at a pair of Archaic-Era hunter-gatherer sites in New Mexico, occurred in April 2015. Profile
	Jakia Marie Doctoral Candidate in PAS M.A. Student in Anthropology Interests include: Immigration, Culture, Identity Profile
	Emma Schoettmer BA, Anthropology I received my BA in Anthropology from the University of Arizona. I was a student athlete and 4-year letter winner while at Arizona. I competed at both the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Trials in swimming. I was a finalist in the 200 Breaststroke at the 2016 Trials. I am currently interested in the preservation and conservation of artifacts in a museum setting. I completed the internship option at the Grover Museum working with the Shelby County Historical Society in Indiana. During my internship I was able to learn how to accession artifacts into an online catalogue. I also created my own exhibit featuring artifacts from American wars dating from the 1860s-Present. Profile
	Larissa Schroeing Socio-Cultural Anthropology Research interests: Irish Studies, folklore, folk art, folk music, public art. Profile
	Tyler Short Socio-Cultural Anthropology Research interests: 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. Profile
	Meagan Taylor I received by Bachelor’s of Arts in Anthropology at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky in December of 2016. In the summer of 2016, I was fortunate enough to intern at Kentucky Refugee Ministry in Lexington as a Culture Orientation Intern. I was tasked with teaching and implementing cultural topics such as Men’s Health, Transporation, Mental Health, Immigration, and Police. These classes provided the refugee clients with a foundation of how to understand and interact with these institutions and structures during the resettlement process. Recenlty, I have been given the opportunity to substitute at Kentucky Refugee Ministry (KRM) in Louiville, where I teach adult refugees English on a variety of levels. These experiencea have led me to pursue refugee studies. I am pursuing a thesis option with a focus in refugee youths’ experiences through the acculturation and resettlement processes here in the United States.
	Robyn Valenzuela Anthropology 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. Profile
	Amanda Wharfield Anthropology Research Interests: Socio-Cultural Anthropology, Archaeology. Profile

Department of Anthropology

Former Graduate Students