Dear friends of UW Anthropology,
It has been a unique and rich experience serving as Interim Chair in the Department of Anthropology. I have had the opportunity to support stellar faculty and their research endeavors, and the department’s strong and thriving academic programs. I step down from my role as Interim Chair on June 30, 2022, and with full support of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Anthropology faculty, Dr. Sven Haakanson will begin a 5-year term as Chair of the Department of… Read more
Laada Bilaniuk is a professor of linguistic anthropology in the Department, and an expert on language, identity and politics in Ukraine and throughout the post-Soviet world. The following is the transcript of a discussion held with Professor Steven Goodreau, designed to provide our readers with insights and food for thought about the current crisis.
SG: First, can you tell us a bit about your own personal connections to Ukraine, and how that shaped the kind of scholarship you chose to focus on… Read more
Two members of the UW Anthropology Department are dedicated to amplifying and transforming anthropological knowledge and practice through podcasting and public engagement. Yoli Ngandali is a member of the Ngbaka tribe from the Democratic Republic of Congo and a Ph.D. Candidate in archaeology at UW. She uses emerging non-destructive archaeological methods to contribute to Indigenous communities’ capacity to reclaim and reinterpret knowledge gained from museum collections, in partnership with… Read more
The Department of Anthropology has recently welcomed a wonderful new staff member to our growing community: Administrator Haley Lee. Haley has worked in various other departments at UW before making her way here to us. Welcome!
We asked Haley to tell us about her journey here and her work. Here she is, in her own words:
Haley Lee
How would you describe your journey to UW and this position?
I came to the UW as an undergrad and managed to pick up a student assistant position with the Department… Read more
By Stevan Harrell, Professor Emeritus
When I arrived at the University of Washington as a brash, green assistant professor in 1974, Charles “Biff” Keyes took me under his wing. He was an associate professor then, already a well-known scholar of Thai society and religion, schooled by years of field research in several regions of the country. His stature and reputation continued to grow for decades after that, and his scholarly output grew to (by rough count) 21 books and innumerable articles and… Read more
By Stevan Harrell, Professor Emeritus
The Anthropology Department lost one of its most valuable and colorful members when Principal Lecturer Emeritus James Green died last May. Jim was a celebrated teacher, author of two widely-used textbooks, a pioneer in international educational exchanges, an athlete, a storyteller, a great-grandfather, and a faithful friend and revered mentor to many generations of students and junior faculty.
Jim was from the other other Washington—Spokane to be precise—… Read more
FACULTY
Postdoctoral Anthropology Associate Monica Keith accepted a tenure-track position in the Department of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University.
Melanie Martin and Postdoctoral Scholar Monica Keith were selected as one of seven winning teams for the Decoding Maternal Morbidity Challenge from NIH's National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Their team submission, led by Monica, used data from NICHD's Nulliparous Pregnancy Outcomes Study, theories of allostatic load, and… Read more
GRADUATE STUDENTS
Yoli Ngandali received the Wenner-Gren's Engaged Research Grant for 2022. The award will support Yoli's dissertation research and collaborative partnership, "Meaning is in the Making: (Re)connecting with Museum Collections for Indigenous Art Revitalization." Yoli's collaboration with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and Columbia River carvers and artists is part of the first cohort of grantees for the WG Engaged Research Grant, a new grant program that WG established in… Read more