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Department of Anthropology
Brandeis University
P.O. Box 549110, MS 006
Waltham, MA 02454-9110

(781) 736-2210
(781) 736-2232 (FAX)

Office location: Brown 228
lcarpent@brandeis.edu

Graduate Student Research Interests

Following is a list of current Doctoral, Masters, and Joint Masters students at Brandeis University,and their reasearch areas of interest. Click on a student's name for contact information.

Doctoral Students

Coursework Stage

  • Emily Canning
    • Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology. Writing systems, religions, transnational identities. Central Asia, Western China.
  • Bryce Davenport
    • Archaeology. Interdisciplinary approaches to archaeological interpretation, appropriation of symbolic identity, artistic and linguistic representation, ethnohistory. Ideology in political, social, and economic transactions. Mesoamerica, the Classical world, Dynastic and pre-Dynastic Egypt.
  • Casey Golomski
    • Sociocultural. Individual and collective ritual practice, rites of passage, local religions, ancestor veneration, experience, symbolism, material culture. Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
  • Anna Jaysane-Darr
    • Sociocultural. Media and popular culture in Southern Africa and African diaspora.  Media-making and media-using. New media and technology.  Ethnography, writing, and critical cultural theory.
  • Ieva Jusionyte
    • Political anthropology. State and governmentality, construction of space, borders, trafficking, violence, the media; Argentina, Paraguay.
  • Jessica Hardin
    • Sociocultural. Medical anthropology, Postcolonial studies. The body, gender, conceptions of healthiness, families and households, globalization/modernity and food culture. American territories, particularly in Oceania. American Samoa.
  • Melanie Kingsley
    • Archaeology. Sociocultural and economic interactions in Mesoamerica, the role of coastal regions in trade and Maya political landscape.  Izabal, Guatemala.
  • Laura Ligouri
    • Sociocultural and political and religious dynamics of women’s lives as seen through the lens of dance within the Middle East and North African regions.
  • Katie Lukach
    • Archaeology. Pre-Colombian Mesoamerica.
  • Betsy Marzahn-Ramos
    • Archaeology. Mesoamerica, Maya, role of secondary and tertiary settlements in regional political organization of Classic period kingdoms, social organization, style and political affiliation, space and place, semiotics, archaeology of non-elites, household archaeology, ceramics. Peten, Guatemala.
  • Casey Miller
    • Sociocultural. Emergence of “gay” Chinese and East Asian identities, sub-cultures, communities, and socio-political movements. Sexuality and gender. Globalism and cultural transmission. The Internet; ethnology of “gay” cyber-communities. Sexuality, identity, and HIV-AIDS. Social and political theory.
  • Priyanka Nandy
    • Sociocultural. Diaspora studies, post-colonial theory, tranationalism, gender studies, parallel cultures within urban spaces, on-line identities and blogging.
  • Naomi Schiesel
    • Sociocultural. Critical Medical, Feminist and Urban Anthropology. The body, gender, reproduction and sexuality. Teenage childbearing, the female experience of urban poverty, institutionalized inequality and the political economy of social suffering. Power relations and modes of resistance.
  • Donald Slater
    • Archaeology. The Maya, Mesoamerica. Inter and cross-cultural relationships among the Maya and other Mesoamerican civilizations. Iconography, cosmology, and ancient technology.
  • Valerie Smedile Rifkin '04, MA '05
    • Archaeology. Pre-Colombian Mesoamerica. Complex societies. Archaeology of death and burial, gender, and material culture. Monte Albán, Mexico. Geographic Information Systems.
  • Allison Taylor
    • Sociocultural. Medical, psychological, and linguistic anthropology. Trauma, narrative, immigration/transnationalism; public policy applications of anthropology, especially related to mental health and social services for refugee and immigrant communities. The Somali Diaspora in Kenya and the United States.

Proposal Stage

  • Meg Grady-Troia
    • Sociocultural. Urban anthropology, focusing on distinctions of public/private/personal space & place. The construction of domestic and homely landscapes/environments in transience (architecture & structure, material culture, performance, & narrative). Ethnographic research methods and "anthropology at home."
  • Laura John
    • Sociocultural. Economic anthropology. Meaning in material culture and landscape. Scotland.
  • Elisabeth Moolenaar
    • Sociocultural. Immigrant communities and identity issues (American-born Chinese youth in particular); migration, ethnicity and gender; globalization and transnationalism; neocolonialism and power; United States, and South East Asia.
  • Mrinalini Tankha
    • Economic anthropology. Post-socialist tourism and transitions in money, labor and property in contemporary Cuba.

Dissertation Stage

  • Rachana Agarwal
    • Sociocultural. Educational Anthropology: Investigation of identity conflicts that might result from competing educational models and value systems in Micronesia. Postcolonial studies. Anthropology of Science.
  • Jessica Basile
    • Sociocultural. Anthropology of gender; anthropology of the body.  Dissertation working title: "Of Blood and Milk: Theories of Nature and Mother Love in Attachment Parenting."
  • Shukti Chaudhuri-Brill
    • Sociocultural. Socialization of Linguistic and Ethnic Identity among Czech Roma.
  • Silvia Grigolini
    • Sociocultural. Dissertation working title: Household Resource Management Strategies and Migration: Remittance Use in a Mexican Village
  • Samia Huq
    • Sociocultural. Religious revival in Bangladesh. Islamic identities, personal piety and public versus private forms of religion. Women's engagement with religion, women's lived experiences of orthodox Islamic beliefs and practices. Effects of religion on women's roles, relations, and sexuality. Ethnographic region of study: South Asia/Bangladesh.
  • Eric Michael Kelley
    • Sociocultural. Anthropology of Music; Medical Anthropology; Linguistic Anthropology; Myth & Ritual; Social Organization; Semiotic Anthropology; Lowland South America.
  • Júlia Kirst
    • Sociocultural. Anthropology of adolescence, history of childhood in the United States, theories of adolescent development, research with children and the issue of voice. The juvenile justice system, Children in Need of Services (CHINS), the politics and culture of social policy and services on behalf of children. Anthropology of science, critical medical anthropology, anthropology of development, and anthropology of gender. Anthropology for the non-anthropology major. Dissertation working title: “‘In Need of Services’: Youth, Webs of Service and the Politics of Help in a New England Immigrant Community.”
  • Arnaud Lambert
    • Archaeology. Mesoamerica (Formative Period), Olmec-Style Art, Rock Art, Sociocultural Evolution. Research focuses on the role rock art played in the development of complex societies taking part in the so-called Olmec Phenomena of the Middle-Late Formative Period in Mesoamerica.  I am currently conducting field research towards my dissertation and have completed field trips to several Formative Period sites including: Chalcatzingo, Oaxtepec, and Tetela del Monte (Morelos, Mexico), Xochipala (Guerrero, Mexico), and Chalchuapa (El Salvador). 
  • Kerey Luis
    • Cultural Anthropology. Gender. Women's Studies. Intentional Communities. Culture as a Folk Concept. Belief and Folklore. United States.
  • Ellen Rovner
    • Sociocultural. Food, memory, gender, ethnicity and the body. Working title: "Embodied Ethnicity: Food, Sexuality, and Jewish Women."
  • Hillary Waterman
    • Sociocultural. Dissertation topic: cultural context of household resource management. General research interests: families and households, class and gender ideologies, meaning and social interaction. Fieldwork location: Maine.
  • Sara Withers
    • Sociocultural. Work, class, and gendered roles in families and households. Globalization and immigration experiences, Anthropology of the body, Negotiation of masculinity and femininity, Reproduction and medicalization, gender and sports. Fieldwork site: Oaxaca, Mexico. Working title: "Possibilities and Realities: the Production and Reproduction of Gender in Dual-Career Families in Oaxaca, Mexico."
  • Cyndi Wooten
    • Sociocultural. Egyptian cabaret performers.

Master's Students

  • Raffaele Florio
    • Cultural memory of Mediterranean society through its material culture, legends, ritual, folklore and religion.
  • Lauren Forcucci
    • HIV/AIDS, human rights, demography, natalism, ethnicity, immigration, armed conflict, genocide, poverty, globalization, family development, gender, Africa and Italy.
  • Tatiana Loya González
    • Archaeology. Northern Maya Lowlands, Late and Terminal Classic.  Relationship between political alliances, economic networks and the  use of style to define political boundaries. Bioarchaeology.
  • Brianna Mills
    • Medical anthropology, HIV/AIDS, public health consumerism, risk management, applied anthropology,  linguistic perception and cognition and the integration of  nonbiomedical models into the medical system.
  • William McDonald 
    • Families and household reformation among orphaned children due to the impact of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.  Kinship reorganization and interpretation by influence of political violence, armed conflict, and genocide. Human rights. Dispossessed children in urban regions of Africa. Political racism. Applied Anthropology. Fertility and demographic patterns of Africa.  Cultural responses to political change, colonization and independence. Comparative social organization.
  • Tamar Moskowitz '08
    • Jewish communities, issues of self-presentation, community boundaries and social control on identity.
  • Don Carlos Perez
    • Archaeology. Pre-Colombian Mesoamerica, the Maya, the Olmec. Iconography and ideology. Digital archaeology.
  • Rose Beatriz Stimson
    • Anthropology of art, political anthropology, community-engaged research, and ethnography. Migration and transnational identities; diasporas and collective memory; aesthetics and symbolism. South Sudan, Africa, Mediterranean Europe, United States.
  • Angela Stroupe
    • Globalization, gender, religion, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Asian experiences in the American South.
  • David Wisniewski
    • Online communities, social networking, and self-representation in cyberspace.  The impact and enhancement on university life through  the use of online community systems.  Personal representation online  and the social and cultural ramifications.
  • James Wood
    • Visual anthropology, African-American culture.

Joint Master's with Women's & Gender Studies

  • Suma Ikeuchi
    • Rituals, medical anthropology, structuralism, modernity, globalization, symbolism, gender, anorexia and bulimia, the rise of eating disorders in non-Western countries, the global food system, Japan, North America.
  • Nurjan Mamajunusova
    • International development issues, women's health and human rights, Kyrgyzstan.
  • Katie Plocheck
    • Sociocultural. Construction of collective and individual identities; gender and sexuality and their relationship to the body; marriage and intimacy, U.S. and India.
  • Miki Sisco
    • Gender, sexuality, LGBTQ advocacy, media, diasporas, identity, India, Germany.