Dear friends of UW Anthropology,
Welcome to the Winter 2022 Newsletter. I have the honor of serving as Interim Chair during academic year 2021/2022. You may have already heard the exciting news that Associate Professor Sven Haakanson has been named incoming Chair of Anthropology (5-year term effective July 1, 2023). Sven and I are working closely together this academic year as we support the existing programs and lay the groundwork for a bright and exciting future, and Sven’s colleagues are absolutely thrilled about his new forthcoming appointment.
When I am not in Denny Hall, I am in my home department of Speech and Hearing Sciences. There, I served as Chair from 2015-2020. I am a clinical speech-language pathologist at heart and work primarily with individuals who have suffered a left-hemisphere stroke and have difficulty with language (e.g., speaking, understanding, reading, and writing). My research, largely funded by the Veterans Administration Medical Center, focuses on developing effective rehabilitation programs. I recently went back to school to expand my knowledge of Public Health and received an MPH in Global Health from UW in 2020. Moving forward, I am eager to focus my work on health disparities as I seek to better understand and address systems of oppression in the field of Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) and to strengthen academic programs in the rehabilitation sciences in low- and middle-income countries.
In this newsletter, you will find a UW Perspectives article honoring the late Sam Dubal, a piece on Dr. James Pfeiffer, who was recently awarded the prestigious George Foster Practicing Medical Anthropology Award by the Society for Medical Anthropology, an update on the Burke Research Family (Bridging accessibility divides in academic research through Indigenous Oceanic paradigms), and a reprint of the news release where Gov. Jay Inslee named Lenny Forsman, a UW Alumni, the first Native member of the UW Board of Regents. Additionally, this newsletter includes tributes to two members of our community as we mourn the loss of William Haglund and Katherine Taylor.
Thank you for your continued support of UW Anthropology. I hope that you and those you cherish stay safe in the coming year as the world continues to grapple with how to best respond to the many direct and indirect challenges that COVID-19 has laid bare.
Regards,
Diane Kendall, MPH, PhD
Interim Chair, Anthropology
Professor Speech and Hearing Sciences