My research focuses on tibet, especially working with tibetan refugees in both the himalayas and in north america
But I also include the united states in that in that the united states through the cia has been part of the tibetan struggle
Since the 1950s and then more recently
I'm also looking at politics in the united states as well
The graduate course on history and memory is one of my favorite ones to teach
And that looks at the relationship between the two right? What is um
Basically, what is the and that connects history and memory? Why do we put those two together?
Okay, one of my ongoing research projects is on refugee citizenship
And this is um has to do with tibetan refugees who first came out in
1959 following the chinese communist invasion of tibet and first went to india nepal
And in india nepal at those times, the tibetans were not allowed to become citizens
So what i'm interested in is in the refusal of citizenship
In india nepal, but then coming to north
America, tibetans are obtaining citizenship, but they are refusing to give up sovereignty
So they're maintaining their refugee identity in terms of political claim to tibet while becoming citizens of new countries. My research interests are
focused on cuba the caribbean
issues of race
Tourism the graduate course i've taught most frequently is the anthropology of race. Um, and that course
um, basically teaches how where anthropology has
Began with race. I believe we were the ones that constructed and created the categories of race
Pulling it to contemporary time the post-colonial period and into the 21st century where african-americans
Are starting to or have been part of the conversation a critical conversation on race my research continues to be in cuba
tourism is is exploding in the country and i'm interested in how
uh
cubans who have long been excluded from success and uh
Moving up the social ladder particularly cubans of african descent
Are getting into this new realm. Otherwise, they're going to remain at the lowest levels. My primary research interests are
How people live and work with data and then how they understand different kinds of privacy laws and data protection laws
so one course that I teach is called science technology and society and that course is an overview of
How different
Anthropologists and other social scientists have done ethnographic research in laboratories
and other places where scientists work all of our behaviors and interactions are
recorded sometimes with our knowledge and concern other times not this new european law is really pushing back against that and saying
No, there are privacy is a human right a research project that i'm working on now is looking at how different groups of people
in sweden
are trying to adapt to this new law and trying to
Make sure that they're able to continue doing the things that they want to do with data
Even with this new law coming into effect
Well as an environmental anthropologist i'm mostly studied or mostly interested in studying mining development
I have been working in papua new guinea for over 20 years looking at the impact of a large-scale gold mine on indigenous people there
And then lately, I have a new project in southwest colorado looking at how different communities are coming together to clean up abandoned mine land
waste
And then my one graduate course i've been teaching for lately is space place and capitalism
The class itself is structured around
the argument that henry lefeve made in his book the production of space in which
new modes of production create new kinds of spaces
and so what we do is we look at some of the theoretical understandings of space and place and then
use case studies from around the world to see how
Mostly indigenous peoples have been impacted by capitalism and how that creates changing ideas of land
relationships with each other relationships with
Other than human spirits with trees and everything else in their environment currently in the united states west
There are over 500 000 abandoned mines
And many of them leak acid mine drainage into the waterways frequently what happens as communities come together
And find ways to try to clean up some of these abandoned mine lands
and so what my project is looking at is how these
Watershed advisory groups emerge out of sort of local concerns about environmental pollution in the land
But then also how they're tempered by national laws
So my research interests focus on the ways in which family connections and disconnections or family-like relationships
Impact well-being broadly construed and I focus mostly on japan, but i'm working more recently in north america as well
so grad seminar that I developed here is
called embodiment and mental health and I also teach a seminar on language and
Storytelling my long-term research has been in japan focused on people connected to the japanese child welfare system
and that led me to be really interested in these questions about
Family relationships interpersonal relationships disconnection and the stakes for people's long-term well-being
My research is on the growth of the middle class and the growth of islamic consumer culture in indonesia
Those two things have happened
Simultaneously in the last two decades and we are seeing more and more
elaborate forms of women's
modest fashion
that partly have to do with statements of religiosity andness and islamic piety, but also our commentaries on
popular
discontent or worry about the distribution of wealth and corruption
I teach courses on feminist theory. I teach the introductory course on
anthropological theory
And I teach courses on affect theory. I'm also interested in the ways that
the proliferation of covered styles in indonesian popular life and popular culture
is in direct contradiction to what has been a kind of proliferation of
An ostensible claim or desire for more transparency
in political governance and by student activists
And it's not surprising that women in particular
Are ambivalent about the claims for exposure
As a sort of universal good solving all of the social ills what I study is large-scale
transformations in east african
savannas both within an ecological and social framework
I teach a graduate seminar on human ecology in a graduate seminar in methodology
My project is asking the research question
Under what conditions do extreme events become transformative
and that is an in-depth study of the
2008-2009 drought in northern tanzania. I do collaborative research with native american communities
And I connect native american communities to collections in the museum
And one of the ways that I advise graduate students is in curation or curating native american collections and teaching collections managers
In the museum studies program. We have people that are doing collaborative archaeology
And doing public anthropology and so currently for instance i'm working with the mandan hidatsa arikara nation
Um, they are in north dakota and we are working on a comic book together
Um to tell the story of a historical repatriation and some of the repatriation work that we've done with them in more recent years
So at the core of my collaborative research practice
is a commitment to reciprocity and relevance to the communities with whom we work my research interests have morphed from
Looking at race class gender
sexuality
in
brazilian shanty towns to more recently working on nuclear energy issues
And trying to look at the effects of high technology energy projects
on diverse populations
I have taught a recent course on
looking at the
anthropology of the environment
and I teach it from a very
humanities-based perspective right now
i'm actually focusing in on the angra dos ray's nuclear zone in brazil and i'm looking at
how statistics around
Cancer are formed trying to nail down
Whether the nuclear energy project has any effect at all on cancer rates there
Our program is small which means you get a lot of individual attention
We also have a very diverse group of faculty in terms of where they work in the world and the topics on which they work
We are
Gender diverse we are sexuality diverse racially diverse and I think students can find different places to fit in
Well, I think that we're we're a very um, high performing group of faculty. And so
We publish a lot. Um, we get a lot of grants we get do a lot of grant review and so
We're able to offer I think students a really good perspective on what it takes to
Be successful in a program our students get incredible training here. And I think that they leave the program really professionalized
and have a lot of opportunities for
Freedom and their research here the department offers a lot of resources for students
so we have a graduate student speaker series so students get to
Pick out a scholar whose work
They're really interested in
A few times a year and invite that person to campus to give a talk and what I think is really unusual about our program
Is that masters and phd students can get small pockets of money to do summer research?
Our graduate program is very focused on research on getting students into the field
And so someone who's self-motivated and who is excited about being in the field about collecting
Learning people's stories and then retelling them is someone who would be a good fit for our program
You
