Dear friends of UW Anthropology,
Each spring, the Department of Anthropology and the UW celebrates the achievements of our students as many of them graduate and leave our immediate community. For years we had joyous in-person commencements with the hugs and shouted encouragements of family and friends, but then the pandemic arrived. Now, our cherished traditions seem remote — pun intended; I’m trying to be upbeat as we face another round of goodbyes from afar. Our students and alumni remain… Read more
We are honored to announce the creation of the Sam Dubal Endowed Fellowship at the University of Washington. This fellowship is intended to honor Sam’s legacy; it was generously endowed by the Dubal family and over 400 donors mourning Sam’s loss after he disappeared while on a hike on Mt. Rainier in October 2020.
Professor Dubal joined the department in September 2020 after receiving a Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology in 2015 from the joint program at the University of California Berkeley (where… Read more
In September 2020, we welcomed Raphaëlle Rabanes as new faculty in sociocultural anthropology. Dr. Rabanes is a medical anthropologist who works across the fields of Black Studies, Caribbean Studies, and Disability Studies. She was trained in the joint Medical Anthropology PhD program at the University of California Berkeley and University of California San Francisco and in the Black Studies Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the University of California Santa Barbara. She also previously practiced as a… Read more
In Fall 2019 Reuters Top 100: The World’s Most Innovative Universities with The University of Washington listed at no. 5. Additionally, the University of Washington maintained its no. 10 spot on the U.S. News & World Report’s Best Global Universities rankings, released Fall 2019. The UW is ranked no. 2 among U.S. public institutions. These are wonderful honors for our university, but how do our faculty and alumni fair?
In October 2020,… Read more
I designed the course Visuality and Medicine to introduce students in the Department of Anthropology — particularly those in Medical Anthropology and Global Health (MAGH) — to insights from critical visual studies and science and technology studies regarding visuality. What is visuality? It is a strange term, so we address it together on the first day of class. I think of visuality as quite simply anything that has to do with the visual: images, seeing, being seen. It is important to medicine… Read more
Rodrigo Solinis-Casparius is the recipient of the very prestigious Premio Alfonso Caso from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) of México for the best PhD archaeology dissertation undertaken in México for his dissertation entitled, "The Role of Road Systems in Social Definition and Integration."
Rodrigo’… Read more
The COVID pandemic has helped us appreciate the “essential workers” and shone a light on just how many different kinds of essential health care workers there are. Even then, our health system is so complex that there are still many you may not even know about. It’s now the job of Associate Teaching Professor Marieke van Eijk to share the stories of one of those types of workers: health insurance navigators. These are the people who help others through the complicated world of obtaining,… Read more
Photo caption: Dimas Romadhon sitting on railing in Aceh, Indonesia
Before the COVID-19 pandemic began, medical anthropology doctoral student Dimas Iqbal Romadhon had already been studying infectious disease outbreaks and vaccinations in Indonesia. In fact, he spent the summer of 2019 in East Java and Aceh, Indonesia gathering ethnographic information about measles and rubella (MR) vaccine refusal. COVID-19 changed the whole landscape. Not only was Dimas unable to safely travel to Indonesia for… Read more
Social scientists are well equipped to challenge, contribute to, and transform pressing social issues of high impact. Many of us have skills in making nuanced evaluations, collaborating with community stakeholders, and bringing interdisciplinary perspectives to the fore. However, we can potentially amplify our methods, analysis, and dissemination of research using data science toolkits, broadly defined. This is why we created Anthro Data Science, an informal collaborative working group based in… Read more
Staff
John Cady, anthropology department fiscal coordinator for the last 16 years, has accepted a new position in the Dean’s Office to help with the coming transition to Workday Financials. UW has determined Workday Financials will provide the best available platform to support its business objectives for Finance Transformation.
After 20 years with the Department of Anthropology and some 30 years at the University of Washington, Michael Caputi will be retiring at the end of June 2021.
Faculty… Read more
GRADUATE STUDENTS
David Carlson, a PhD student in archaeology, received the Graduate School Presidential Dissertation Fellowship for 2020-21 for his dissertation entitled, “Residence, Resistance, and Racialization: A Historical Archaeology of Japanese American Daily Life at Barneston, Washington.”
Erin Gamble, a PhD student in archaeology, received an NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant for her dissertation research, “Trade and Entanglement in Precolonial Hokkaido: The Formation of the Okhotsk… Read more
We would like to take this opportunity to thank those generous donors who contributed to our efforts this past year. We believe that anthropology makes a world of difference and we want you to know that you make a world of difference to us!
Dr. David AgoadaMr. Jefferey L. BabautaRobert T. Boyd, Ph.D.Ms. Marion W. BurnsCurtis Wienker TrustWilliam S. Dancey, Ph.D. and Ms. Kathleen Reilly DanceyLydia A. DeSantis, Ph.D.Mr. Bharat Dubal and Dr. Saroj DubalG. Carter Bentley, Ph.D and Lynda M… Read more