Introducing the 2013 Cohort of SoA Graduate Students Amanda Jean Bailey (Linguistic Anthropology): no biography available. Kassi Bailey (Archaeology) was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio where she received her Bachelor’s degrees in Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Cincinnati in 2012. As an undergraduate, Kassi participated on field projects such as the Southern Albania Neolithic Archaeological Project (SANAP) and the Upper Basin Archaeological Research Project (UBARP). During the summer of 2013, she took an archaeobotany course at the Japanese Institute of Anatolian Archaeology in central Turkey. In addition, she has worked as a research assistant in the Mediterranean Ecosystem Dynamics and Archaeology (MEDArch) Lab sorting archaeobotanical samples from Vashtëmi, Albania, and digitizing trench profile data. Her interests in human-environment interactions have encouraged Kassi to pursue zooarchaeology at the UA, where she hopes to explore the ways in which humans respond and impact regional paleoenvironmental variability, with a focus on the transition to agriculture during the Neolithic. She loves to draw and watch zombie movies in her spare time and has an avid fascination with playing with insects (especially feeding peanut butter to a praying mantis). Mario Battaglia (Applied Archaeology) grew up in Southern Oregon on a ten acre farm in the very small town of Rogue River. Contrary to popular belief, he was not named after Super Mario, the famous video game character, but rather Mario Andretti, the also quite famous racing driver. In 2005, Mario attended the University of Oregon receiving a B.A. in Anthropology with minors in History and Ethnic Studies. Shortly afterward, Mario entered into the Peace Corps in Mali, West Africa, as an agriculture and environment volunteer. While in the Peace Corps he collaborated with local farmers to test hybrid seed varietals of sorghum and millet. He also worked with many women in the village to build a community garden, construct village wide hand washing stations for public and school use, and create the foundations for a sustainable (hopefully) vegetable seed bank. Currently, he is in the Masters of Applied Archaeology program with specific interests in cultural heritage preservation and public outreach among marginalized and/or descendant communities, collaborative approaches to archaeological practice and methodology, archaeology as a form of social work, landscape archaeology, and lithic analysis. He is also in the Peace Corps Fellows program at the UA involved with numerous community service projects throughout the year. Austin Duncan is a Sociocultural and Medical Anthropology Ph.D. student from Seattle, Washington. He is interested in critiquing biomedical theory and treatment of mental and physical disabilities through a study of community-based rehabilitation strategies, international disability policy, and reactions to perceived/embodied human differences in the West-Central African country of Cameroon. Austin became interested in this topic while serving in the Peace Corps in Cameroon in 2008–2010, conducting fieldwork for his Master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Affairs in Seattle, WA, in 2011. In a previous life (quite literally), he was awarded a Fulbright Grant to study “Youth Religious Associations, Sharia, and Social Change in Kuwait,” after graduating with a B.A. in anthropology and a concentration in African/Middle-Eastern Studies from Williams College in Williamstown, MA, in 2002. He developed an interest in anthropology by studying abroad in Tanzania and Egypt while in college, and he was hooked on international studies by a high school exchange scholarship to Japan in 1996. Austin is also a dedicated amateur musician, winning awards playing solo and chamber classical piano in Williamstown and Seattle, and trying (and failing) to “make it” playing electric bass in metal and grunge rock bands in Seattle in the ‘90s. Elizabeth Eklund (Sociocultural Anthropology) is from California. Born in San Diego, she received her B.S. in environmental sciences from the University of California, Berkeley, minoring in anthropology and environmental economics and policy. She went on to receive an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, where she studied how natural and cultural resources are preserved in the United States National Park and National Forest Systems, focusing on how protected areas are established and what this means for local people. She then earned an M.A. in Anthropology from San Diego State University, studying an international framework for establishing protected areas (UNESCO’s Man in the Biosphere, Biosphere Reserve program), focusing on the process of proposing a new Biosphere Reserve in the Sierras Guadalupe and Giganta in Baja California Sur. At SDSU Elizabeth served as SDSU Southwestern Consortium for Environmental Research and Policy coordinator, assisting with a variety of tasks that included helping organize a binational workshop on the management of the Tijuana River Watershed, held in May 2013 in Tijuana, Baja California and Imperial Beach, California. Her research interests are in trans-boundary ecosystems and watersheds, US Southwest/Northwestern Mexico, the intersection of people and nature, parks and protected areas, and the practice of science. Evan Giomi (Archaeology): no biography available. Brian C. Harmon (Applied Archaeology) grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Miami University (Ohio). For the last 13 years, he has worked in cultural resource management as a supervisory archaeologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and on the southeast edge of the San Juan Basin. Currently Brian is using ground stone artifacts to investigate how different Archaic period (circa 8000 BCE to 200 CE) hunter-gatherer populations in Arizona altered their subsistence and mobility patterns in response to environmental change. His other research interests include geomorphology, cross-cultural studies, and using public outreach to keep the world safe for archaeology. As a cultural resource manager, Brian plans to develop programs to improve the public’s understanding of what archaeologists really do and to grow an ethic of stewardship. To relax, Brian enjoys eating anything with green chiles; hiking; chess; reading history, poetry, and science fiction; and telling the story of how he was bitten by a rattlesnake. Sharlot Hart (Applied Archaeology) grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, came to the University of Arizona in Tucson for her undergraduate degree in History, with a minor in Plant Sciences, and then left Arizona to travel. She spent two years serving with the Peace Corps in Madagascar. There she worked in Environmental Education, linking health and environment messages in her work with schools, creating a radio series, and installing a community library. Upon returning to the U.S., Sharlot lived in Oregon, working for the Oregon Department of Forestry in a number of roles, most notably in Wildland Fire Prevention. She returned to Arizona in 2009 with an interpretive ranger position at Montezuma Castle and Tuzigoot National Monuments. She has worked there since, except for a quick seasonal jaunt to Chiricahua National Monument and Fort Bowie National Historic Site. Sharlot has returned to the University of Arizona to obtain two Masters level degrees. The first will be through the School of Information Resources and Library Sciences, with an emphasis in Archives. The second is with the School of Anthropology in the Applied Archaeology program. She hopes to use these degrees to care for and promote cultural heritage through curation. For her work Sharlot has received a Paul D. Coverdell Peace Corps Fellowship. When not fretting about classes, she works as a Graduate Assistant at the Western Archeological and Conservation Center, and serves as President of the UA Chapter of the Society of American Archivists. With any left over time she enjoys hiking with her two dogs and reading with her cat. Erika Heacock (Applied Archaeology) received her B.A. in Anthropology with a focus in Archaeology from the UA in 2010. Between graduating and beginning the graduate program, she earned the Archaeological Field Certificates from Pima Community College. Erika’s research focuses on shell manufacturing and trading within the Southwest region. She currently works at the Arizona State Museum in the archaeological repository. Erika is a local Tucsonan and loves to hike, rock climb, and SCUBA dive. Parvaneh Hosseini Fahraji (Linguistic Anthropology): no biography available. Originally from Houston, Texas, Kelsey Jelenc (Biological Anthropology) received a B.A. in Anthropology with a minor in Spanish from the University of Texas at Austin. After graduating, she decided to attend the University of Cincinnati where she completed an M.A. in Anthropology. Her M.A. thesis explored the role of infant-carrying in human evolution, focusing specifically on the biomechanical challenges associated with transporting one’s infant. Currently, she is interested in the evolution of bipedalism and endurance running, as well as evolutionary perspectives on modern human biology and health. Nicholas Kessler (Archaeology) got started in archaeology while an undergraduate at the University of Kansas. He spent the summer after his freshman year unloading trucks at a grocery store, and decided that when the next summer rolled around he would be doing something more interesting. That next year Nick attended the Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute’s field school at Fort Hood, Texas. By the following year, he had enough work in a lab to end his burgeoning career as a grocery clerk and pallet jack operator. Around this time Nick met his future wife, Erin. During his M.A. coursework, Nick began to narrow his interests to geoarchaeology, environmental archaeology, and Global Change. In 2009 Nick left full-time enrollment and a TA position because so much pipe-line cultural resources management (CRM) work had emerged in the Great Plains. He learned a lot and managed to finish his thesis in hotel rooms from Florida to North Dakota. Nick’s work over the last couple years has involved geoarchaeology (modeling, scoping, and directing deep testing) and historic archaeology. These experiences crystallized his prior interests within a desire to build better records of socio-economic and environmental change to answer specific questions about historic land-use, globalization, and environmental degradation. Stephanie Martin (Archaeology) received her B.A. in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology with minors in Geology and Latin from Bryn Mawr College in 2012. Her past fieldwork includes excavations in Greece and the United Arab Emirates and a survey project in Naxçivan, Azerbaijan. She has also worked at a prehistoric site in Maryland, in addition to working in CRM along the east coast with the Louis Berger Group, Inc. based in New Jersey. Her interests include survey and landscape archaeology, spatial analysis and GIS, and early trade and communication networks. A native of Reno, Nevada and Lawtell, Louisiana, Andrew J. Richard (Applied Archaeology) grew up in California, Colorado, and New Mexico. He attended the University of Colorado and transferred to the UA in 2010, graduating with a degree in anthropology with a minor in geoarchaeology in 2012. Andy’s undergraduate research focused on PaleoIndian hunting strategies through the study of lithic technology as represented in the archaeological record by the use of experimental archaeology. Under the supervision of his advisor, Dr. Vance Holliday, Andy received research funding from the Honors College and participated in the Honors College Research Expo in 2011 and 2012, received numerous grants and scholarships, and is both a Magellan Scholar and an Honors College Legacy Alumni Award winner. Andy’s current interests still include PaleoIndian and Archaic projectile point breakage and transitions in lithic technology. Other interests are geoarchaeology and Hohokam archaeology, including Pre-Ceramic through the Late-Classic period. When not on campus or studying, he can be found hunting or fishing and spending time with his wife and kids. Sanjog Sahu (Sociocultural Anthropology) hails from a coastal village in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, but grew up in various parts of India. In 2009, he graduated with a dual bachelor’s degree in arts and law from Symbiosis International University, Pune, and since then has worked for a number of years in the Eastern Ghats of India, initially as an independent environmental researcher and later working with communities to support and strengthen community-driven forest management. More recently he was involved in a study exploring how such community-based initiatives can be integrated with recently enacted progressive Indian laws such as the 2006 Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act. Sanjog’s current research interests include environmental anthropology, coupled socioecological systems, complexity theory, resilience, social movements, conflict, mining, development, and sustainability. He was a recipient of the Young India Fellowship in 2012. Besides being a student of anthropology, Sanjog is also an avid hiker, a passion he gets ample opportunity to indulge in during the course of his work. Ismael Sánchez-Morales (Archaeology) was born and raised in Mexico City, where he got his Bachelor’s degree in Archaeology from the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia with a thesis focused on the adaptive strategies, settlement pattern, and mobility of the Archaic period settlers of Sonora, Mexico, through a technological and typological analysis of the projectile point and biface industries, obtaining an Honorable Mention. During his last years in college and after graduating, Ismael got involved in research projects related to Clovis occupations of northwestern and central Mexico, and the study of the early settlers of America became one of the fundamental topics that have defined his career over the past five years. As a graduate student, Ismael’s research project focuses on the subsistence pattern and mobility of the Clovis settlers of Sonora and southeastern Arizona, but his academic interests include paleoanthropology, biological anthropology, paleolithic archaeology, hunter-gatherer societies, and lithics in general. Aside from academic life, Ismael’s personal hobbies include riding his bike, skateboarding, and playing music, especially on his electric guitar. As a life-long Tucsonan, Barry Price Steinbrecher (Applied Archaeology) has developed a strong interest and appreciation for the history and culture of the American Southwest, in particular the Arizona-Sonoran borderlands. Barry completed a B.A. in Art History in 2008 and a graduate certificate in Heritage Conservation in 2012, both from the UA. She is currently in the Master of Arts in Applied Archaeology program at UA School of Anthropology. Her broad areas of interest include the role of ethnography and collaboration with descendent communities and how non-western values can be translated into the current heritage preservation legal framework. More specifically, she is interested in cultural landscapes and cultural contact in the American Southwest. In 2012 Barry’s documentation of the cultural landscape associated with El Tiradito, a shrine in downtown Tucson, was recognized by the Historic American Landscape Survey. In her free time, Barry enjoys running, hiking, and spending time with friends and family. William A. White, III (Archaeology) is interested in historical archaeology of the American West. His current research focuses on how archaeology can benefit ethnic communities, specifically African American enclaves in the United States. He is interested in using archaeological data to address issues of racism and examine how the racialization process has affected urban and community development in the past. Born and raised in Boise, Idaho, William’s dissertation research focuses on a neighborhood in Boise that was home to the city’s small African American community. Prior to coming to the UA, William worked in CRM as a historical archaeologist for nine years. His CRM work has taken him across the United States, but he spent the last seven years in Washington State and Arizona. William’s CRM-industry interests include occupational health and safety, digital site recordation methods, and addressing the gap between a university education and the occupational skills required for a successful career in cultural resources. He started a website, succinctresearch, as a way to disseminate CRM knowledge within the industry, to new practitioners, and to college students. William is also a husband, guardian to his teenaged sister, and proud father of two beautiful children. They love gardening, the outdoors, and traveling together.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Oct 2013 21:02:27 +0000
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