Graduate Students
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Jordan Chatellier (she/her) BA: Anthropology, University of Louisville After receiving my BA in Anthropology from UofL in May of 2023 (and falling in love with anthropology), I knew I wanted to stay here to pursue an MA! My main area of research is in biological anthropology, mainly focusing on skeletal remains, while incorporating cultural anthropological ideas. Contact: jordan.wood.1@louisville.edu |
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Cenetria Crockett BA: History (minor in Anthropology), Christian Brothers University, Memphis, TN. My research interests include historical and environmental archaeology, cultural resource management, and collections management. I have experience in the museum industry through my work with the C.H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa with the University of Memphis and Elvis Presley's Graceland. I selected the University of Louisville for my graduate studies because of the hands-on experiences and learning styles offered. Contact: cenetria.crockett@louisville.edu |
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Mekenzie Davis BA: History and Anthropology, University of Louisville. Some of my main research interests include bioarchaeology, paleopathology, structural inequality and violence, and gender. Other areas of interest include labor history and historical epidemiology. Among many reasons, the warm and supportive community drew me back to the U of L Department of Anthropology to pursue an MA. Contact: mekenzie.davis@louisville.edu |
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Sara Marian Deurell BA: Anthropology (minor in Russian Studies), University of Louisville My research interests include historic archaeology, local/urban archaeology, bioarchaeology, and health and medicine in the archaeological record, particularly during the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. I completed a museum studies course in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2013 and a field school at the Celtic Iron Age necropolis site of Pintia in Spain in 2014. I have worked for the local CRM firm, Corn Island Archaeology, for nine years. I also write both fiction and nonfiction, and am a partner in a small, local press, Per Bastet Publications. Contact: saramarianbooks@gmail.com |
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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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Kat Flood BA: Cultural Anthropology (with minors in Geology and Forensics), Kent State University. My research interests are in experimental archaeology with a focus on bone and stone tool technology. I also have interests in biological anthropology and have a background in forensics via field work and shadowing at medical examiners office. I have a few published papers and these can be found linked on my ResearchGate. For my future endeavors, I intend to get my PhD and work as a professor and to work in a museum with a focus on collections and public engagement. Contact: kat.flood@louisville.edu |
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Christine High BA: Anthropology with concentration in archaeology, women’s studies, and philosophy, University of Louisville. Thesis Research: The impact of adverse childhood experiences on birth outcomes and the use of hypnosis during pregnancy to mitigate stress levels. Other research interests: US cemetery and burial customs (especially New Orleans), folklore, superstition in architecture, and plantation archaeology. Christy is a passionate advocate for birth rights and reproductive justice. After the birth of her daughter in 2014, Christy voraciously pursued numerous avenues of education affording her multiple opportunities to support birthing families wherever they may find themselves on their birth journey. She has been a board member and Treasurer of the Birth Care Network since 2018, in addition to volunteering with the Kentucky Birth Coalition, which has successfully lobbied to change birth legislature around home birth midwife licensure in the state. After a 14-year hiatus, she returned to UofL to pursue her M.A. in Anthropology, continuing her birth education through a focus on medical anthropology. She holds the following certifications: Hypnobabies® Childbirth Hypnosis Instructor (HCHI) and Hypno Doula (HCHD) | Becoming Dad certified | RYT 200HR | trained prenatal yoga teacher via ShantiMom (RYS) | University of Louisville LGBTQ Health Certificate | Emeritus Evidence Based Birth® Instructor and Childbirth Educator. Contact: Christine.high@louisville.edu |
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Autumn Koehling (she/her) BA: Archaeology from University of Evansville My major interests of study are biological anthropology, particularly human osteology, mortuary archaeology, burial customs, and religion. I participated for two years in the Jezreel Expedition, an excavation at Tel Jezreel in Israel ran by the University of Evansville in conjunction with the University of Haifa. My thesis work is related to the Jezreel Expedition, studying the Tel's Crusader Age Cemetery, primarily its juvenal occupants. I am also passionate about social justice work and repatriation. Contact: autumn.koehling@louisville.edu |
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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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Erin Kurtz BA: Anthropology, Sustainability (Minors: Creative Writing and Women’s and Gender Studies). My focus is in cultural anthropology, and I am specifically interested in the environment, environmental justice, sustainability, food justice, waste and sanitation, homelessness, and queer anthropology. Contact: erin.kurtz@louisville.edu |
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Jacob McCue BA: English (minor in Teaching English as a Foreign Language), St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota. I am interested in experimental archaeology with a focus on lithic technology, which I see it as a great avenue to understanding the choices and decision our ancestors made in making ancient tools that sparked our creative capacity. My other interests revolve around public archaeology (making archaeology accessible to everyone), museum curation, and the discovery of new archaeological information through survey and excavation. Regionally, I am broadly interested in the history, culture, archaeology, and architecture of Japan, as well as the history, culture and archaeology of Indigenous Americans. |
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Michelle Montalvo-Jourdan works in the Graduate School as the program coordinator for student recruitment, success, and retention. She is also a current 2nd yr. graduate student studying Anthropology, with a focus on environmental sustainability and food sovereignty. She began her professional career at U of L in 2017 with Campus Housing as Assignments Coordinator. Outside of school and work, Michelle likes to be in nature, garden, urban forage, do yoga, read true crime novels, and make maps. And she lives by the motto “Honor the journey and reflect on the experiences, be kind to all including yourself, live a life of compassion, peace starts on our plates.” |
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Maggie O'Daniel BA: Anthropology, University of Kentucky. I’m a cultural anthropologist with special interest in human rights, power dynamics, total institutions, sexuality and gender, feminist anthropology, political anthropology, and applied anthropology. I was drawn to the University of Louisville’s MA in cultural anthropology because I grew up in Louisville and wanted to be able to use my education to enrich my own community. The university’s involvement in locally based projects was a perfect fit for me. Contact: margaret.odaniel@louisville.edu |
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James Petko BA: Anthropology, History, German from Ohio University I am mainly interested in biological anthropology, specifically focusing on evolutionary anthropology, osteology, dentition, and how stressors such as malnutrition and disease appear on bones. I intend to start a career in the museum field as a curator or field/artifact researcher. I chose UofL because of the experiential path offered, the ability to get hands on experience in a museum through an internship with the help of the program was very appealing to me. Contact: james.petko@louisville.edu |
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Elizabeth Pope M.F.A. Creative Writing, Eastern Kentucky University Current Ph.D. student, Humanities (August 2022-present), University of Louisville I am pursuing an M.A. in Anthropology with interests in environmental archaeology, bioarchaeology, historical archaeology, and cultural anthropology; while completing a Ph.D. in Humanities with a track of Public Arts and Letters with interests in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Creative Writing, Native Nations Literature of North America, and Indigenous Studies. E-mail: mary.pope@louisville.edu |
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Allison Sherman BA: Anthropology, University of South Carolina. I’ve spent the past two years working at the Archaeological Research Institute in Lawrenceburg, Indiana as a lab assistant and field technician. My research interest revolves around in zooarchaeology (the study of animal remains from archaeological sites). I’m a third generation Louisville Cardinal from Florence, KY. Contact: allison.sherman@louisville.edu |
Former Graduate Students |
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Neha Angal 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. |
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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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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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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. |
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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. |
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Haley Zoeller BA: Merchandising, University of Kentucky. After completing my undergraduate degree in merchandising at the University of Kentucky, I discovered my love for people and cultures while traveling in Greece. I joined the MA program at UofL Fall of 2021. My areas of interest are environment justice and political ecology, agroecology, food justice, and sovereignty for indigenous and other marginalized communities. Contact: haley.zoeller@louisville.edu |