Congrats to our 2025-2026 Graduates!

Summer 2025

Dr. Pablo Aguilera Del Castillo, PhD

SUBTERRANEAN SOVEREIGNTY: THE EMERGENCE OF THE YUCATEC KARST AQUIFER SYSTEM AS A POLITICAL SPACE IN YUCATÀN, MEXICO

Fall 2025

Dr. Randy Burson, MD-PhD

TERRITORIES OF HEALTH: THE POLITICS AND PRACTICE OF INTERCULTURAL HEALTHCARE IN CHILE

Spring 2026

Dr. Xiao Schutte-Ke, PhD

MOUNTAINS OF SCIENCE AND SORROW: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF MORE-THAN-HUMAN RAPPORT ON THE TIBETAN PLATEAU

Dr. Ross Perfetti, MD-PhD 

SYNDROMES OF CARE: A TRAUMATOLOGY OF AMERICAN MEDICINE

 

2025-2026 PhD Candidacy Examinations

Clara Secaira 

Marisa Kelath 

Gustavo Valenzuela 

Kaylani Manglona 

Latoya Briscoe 

Nora Al-Aati - 05.22.2026

Shriya Amin - 05.26.2026

 

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2025-2026 Graduate Student Accolades

 

Ashlynn Arzola

National Science Foundation GRFP, 2026

 

Iona Hillman

National Science Foundation GRFP, 2026

 Dental Anthropology Association Student Research Support Grant, 2026

 

Sooah Kwak

Seol Broadcasting System Fellowship, 2025

 

Nora Al-Aati

Kolb Society Junior Fellow, 2026

Wenner Gren, 2026

 

Evan Tims

Department of South Asian Studies, Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, 2025

 

Latoya Briscoe

The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation Grant, 2026

Rodin Fellowship, 2026

Dissertation Research Award, 2026

 

Anna Luurtsema

Heritage West Research Assistantship, 2026

 

Vivian Bi

The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation Grant, 2026

 

Ankita Reddy

2026 Dean's Scholar Award

 

Alessandra Laurer Rosen

Dissertation Research Award, 2026

 

Abhi Sanghani

Rodin Fellowship, 2026

 

Hakimah Abdul-Fattah

Kolb Society Junior Fellow, 2026

 

Katleho Shoro

Wolf Humanities Center Research Assistantship, 2026

 

Xiao Schutte Ke

Society of Linguistic Anthropology Gumperz Graduate Prize, 2025

 

Matthew Capps

Heritage West Research Assistantship, 2026

 

Moriah McKenna

Wenner Gren, 2026

 

Randy Burson

Rudolf Virchow Award from the Society for Medical Anthropology (CAGH), 2026 

 

 

2025-2026 Graduate Student Publications, Presentations, and Professional Opportunities

Autumn Melby

• Publication - Scout’s Honor: Avocational Archaeology and Site Stewardship with Youth Scouting Organizations, accepted pending minor revisions for a Southeastern Archaeology journal special issue publication on Southeastern Community Archaeologies.

 Chelsea Cohen

• Publication - Cohen, C., Of Water and Wood: The Archaeology of Wharfage and Landmaking in the Eighteenth-Century Middle Atlantic. Society for American Archaeology, Denver.
• Publication - Cohen, C., Above Water, Below Ground: Toward an amphibious archaeology of empire in the early American Chesapeake. Society for Historical Archaeology, New Orleans.

 Robert Bryant

• Publication - "Results from Beyond the Oasis: Excavations of the 2022–23 Field Season of the Bat Archaeological Project", issue 25 of the Journal of Oman Studies

 Aliyah Bixby-Driesen

• Presentation - SALSA Conference, UT Austin 2025
• Presentation - Penn Semiotic Conference 2025
• Presentation - Society for Linguistic Anthropology 2025
• Presentation - American Anthropological Association, November 2025
• Teaching - Instructor of Record for ANTH 0020 - Anthropology, Race, and the Making of the Modern World

 Rachael Stephens

• Presentation - Society for Linguistic Anthropology 2025
• Presentation - Semiotics Conference 2025
• Teaching - Instructor for Trinity College’s Liberal Arts Action Lab

Rebecca Winkler

• Publication - Baker, L., Pauketat, J., Blaine, S., Greer, C., Howansky, K., Massiot, E., Maarschalkerweerd, M., Winkler, R., “Autonomy: an indicator of wellbeing in rewilded Asian elephants connected to Karen communities in Thailand.” Society & Animals. 25(1). 2025. DOI: 10.116 3/15685306-bja10252
• Publication - Baker, L.,Winkler, R., Blaine, S., Greer, C., McCrea, K., Peoples, L. 2025. “The Complexity of Foraging and Its Role in Elephant Well-Being.” In Elephant Welfare in Global Tourism, 37–55. CABI International. DOI: 10.1079/9781836990093.0003
• Publication - Winkler, R. “Interdisciplinary openings and disciplinary closures” Humanimalia 17(1). (2026 – in press)
• Presentation - Reframing Human-Elephant Co-laboring and Cohabitation in Thailand - Association for Asian Studies in Asia Annual Conference, June 2025

Chrislyn Laurore

• Publication - Stevens, C. and Chrislyn Laurie Laurore. “Traveling Treasures - How 3D Technology Connects Liberians to Their History.” SAPIENS, https://www.sapiens.org/culture/virtual-reality-liberiaheritage-return/
• Publication - Reilly, Matthew C., Caree A. Banton, Chrislyn Laurie Laurore, and Craig Stevens. “Archaeologies of Black Futurity: Sketches of Liberia’s Monuments and Ruins.” In Undoing Things, edited by Gavin Lucas and Shannon Dawdy, 313-335. Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2025.
• Publication - Reilly, Matthew C., Caree A. Banton, Craig Stevens, and Chrislyn Laurie Laurore. “The Archaeology of Providence Island: Liberian Heritage beyond Settlement.” American Antiquity 89, no. 4 (2024): 647-63.
• Presentation - “Back-to-Africa, Back 2 Barbados: Two Centuries of Experiments in Pan Africanism,” Anthropology and the Black Experience Conference, Dakar, Senegal. May 2025.

Chris LaMack

• Presentation - Society for Historical Archaeology Annual Meetng (New Orleans, LA), 2025
• Publication - “A Multi-Modal, Multi-Species Approach to Recovering Black History: K9 Detection, GPR, and the Search for Worthington Cemetery” for consideration for Historical Archaeology

Xiao Schutte Ke

• Publication - “Between Terror Monolingualism and A Thousand Multilingual Plateaus: Towards a Tibetan Sociolinguistics”, Journal of Sociolinguistics (estimated inprint time: Nov. 2025).
• Publication - “View and Land and View the Region: Landscape Poetics and Terrainviewing Acts in Amdo Tibet”, American Anthropologist.
• Publication - “Red Notes on the Stupas: Speculative Recontextualization on the Tibetan Periphery,” in Special Issue Technologies of Writing in Multilingual Asia, ed. Sheng Long and Katherine Dimmery, Asian Studies Review.
• Publication - “Beyond Indigeneity as a Keyword: Fabulating Pluralistic Indigeneity Models in China’s Ethnic Frontiers” in Special Issue Identity Imperialism, ed. Joshua Babcock and Jay Ke-Schutte, Language and Communication.
• Presentation - "Scatological Encounters,” Society for Linguistic Anthropology Conference, May 28, 2025, Chicago, IL, USA.
• Presentation - “Human-Animal Rapport beyond Vitalistic Figures,” Penn Semiotic Conference, May 9, 2025, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
• Presentation - “Experimenting with Craft: Small Business Artmaking and Indigenous Spirituality in Tibet,” co-authored with Helena He, Spirituality & the Arts conference, Program for the Evolution of Spirituality, Harvard Divinity School, May 24, 2025, Boston, MA, USA.

Eric Hubbard

• Opportunity - Excavation, and paleo-hydrological survey (including experience in OSL sampling) at KK1, Bukhara, Uzbekistan with Dr. Lynne Rouse (DAI) and Soren Stark (NYU ISAW) (Fall 2023- Present). Led systematic survey of western Kimirek Kum as part of dissertation project
• Opportunity - Conducted extensive geophysical survey of Fort Mifflin, Philadelphia and to aid public archaeology project at the fort geared towards veterans (Spring 2025).
• Opportunity - Assisted with geophysical surveys supporting Kim Bowes’ ‘Building Rome Project’ in Giove, Italy (Summer 2025).
• Teaching - Provided guest instruction for MELC course Heritage and Nationalism taught by Dr. Hammer, including guided review of materials in Museum archive and tour of the Eastern Mediterranean Gallery, 2025
• Presentation - Society for Historical Archaeology Conference in New Orleans (January 2025) on the Worthington Cemetery Project remote sensing.
• Presentation - ICAANE Conference in Lyon, France (June 2025) on dissertation related material, Kimirek Kum surveys.
• Presentation - Defiance Public Library on results of Worthing Cemetery remote sensing (June 2025).
• Publication - Hubbard, E., C. LaMack, S. Marshall, R. Hopper, J. J. Hall, T. Bryan, and A. Bevins. ‘A Multi-Modal, Multi-Species Approach to Recovering Black History: K9 Detection, GPR, and the Search for Worthington Cemetery.’ [submitted to Historical Archaeology].
• Publication - Hubbard E., F. Jürcke, and L. Rouse. ‘No one Steps in the Same River Twice: Palaeochannel Mapping as Both Method and Interpretive Process in Archaeohydrological Research in Central Asia.’ [submitted to Archaeological Prospection].
• Publication - Rouse, L. M., Stark, S., Mirzaakhmedov, J. K., Mirzaakhmedov, S. J., Ammerman, S., Bechter, A., Bayani, N., Erb-Satullo, N. Haruda, A., Ho, J. W. I., Hubbard, E. T., Hunter, S. A., Pourmomeni, S., Schreiber, F., Silvia, Z. W., & Specia, G. (in review). ‘Investigations at Kimirek-Kum 1 in 2024: Report on Spring and Autumn Fieldwork Seasons.’ [submitted to Archaeological Research in Asia]

Randy Burson

• Presentation - American Anthropological Association, November 2025

Tayeba Batool

• Presentation - “Examining the Urban ‘Ecologist’ as a Political Figure of Climate Change.” International Conference on Everyday Lives of Instability in Global South. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. April 2025
• Presentation - “We Won’t Fail in the Practical: Narratives from an Urban Forest in Pakistan.” Penn Grad Ben Talks (public facing Ted-talk style presentation). University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. February 2025.
• Presentation - “The Ecologist as an Elusive Figure: Experimenting and Cultivating with Urban Nature.” Matters of Urban Expertise symposium. KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland. November 2024.
• Presentation - “Confronting Weeds: Politics of Belonging and Everyday Botanical Encounters.” Annual Conference on South Asia, Wisconsin-Madison. October 2024.
• Publication - “Altering Nature, Shaping Climate: ‘Political’ Trees, Experts, and City Making in Islamabad, Pakistan.” Under revision for City and Society.
• Publication - “Arboreal Attunements – Kinesthetics, Seeding, and Molluscan Encounters.” 
• Publication - “Frazier, Camille. 2024. Cultivating Livability: Food, Class, and the Urban Future in Bengaluru. University of Minnesota Press.” H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences. January 2025.

Katleho Shoro

• Presentation - 14 - 18 May 2025, Anthropology and the Black Experience Conference (Dakar, Senegal) Paper Presented: “Practicing creativity, Practicing womanhood: Exploring Black African womanhood through the creative practices of senior women in Lesotho and Sirigu (Ghana)” Panel: Process, Praxis, and Performativity: Explorations of Black Women’s Creative and Embodied Knowledges Throughout Africa and the African Diaspora
• Presentation - 17 - 21 June 2025, Lagos Studies Association 2025 Conference (online)
  Paper Presented: “Litema/Bambolse: Analysing a women-centred creative practice to grapple with the complexities of womanhood and African Aesthetics
  Conference: Lagos Studies Association” Panel: African Philosophy Through the World-Sense of African Women
• Presentation - 9-11 July 2025, 6th African Feminisms (Afems) Conference (Nelson Mandela University, South Africa)
  Paper Presented: “Engaging Ecological Technologies in the Embodied practice of litema” Panel: Geographies of the imagination
• Opportunity - Appointed as Review Editor for H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online (African Literature and Cinema subnetwork) Period: August 2025 - August 2027
• Publication - “Retrospective” in New Contrast Issue 208 (June 2025)
• Publication - “Upon Beige We Hide”, “Brewing in relation”, “Life Jacket”, & “All Life” in Evergreen Review https://evergreenreview.com/read/upon-beige-we-hide-and-other-poems/

Ross Perfetti

• Presentation - Perfetti, R. (2025 June 25-27). Subjectivities of Medical Progress: Delirium and the Re-making of Life in Intensive Care. Summer Program in the Advanced Study Institute for Social and Cultural Psychiatry, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
• Presentation - Perfetti, R. (2025 May 29-30). Dreaming as Relation, Method, and Forms of Life (Wenner Gren Workshop Participant). University of California, Davis, CA, US.
• Presentation - Perfetti, R. and Niehuus, R. (2025 May 8-11). Resting the Others (Roundtable Organizer). Society for Cultural Anthropology Biennial Meeting, Stony Point, NY, US
• Presentation - Perfetti, R. (2025 Apr 3-6) A disease of medical progress: delirium and the re-making of life in intensive care. Presentation at the Society for Psychological Anthropology (SPA) Biennial Meeting, Tamaya, NM, US
• Presentation - Perfetti, R. (2024 Nov 20-23). Method, Analysis, and Ethics in Hospital Ethnography. Presentation at the American Anthropological Assosciation (AAA), Tampa, FL, US
• Teaching - Instructor of Record for ANTH 0040 (The Modern World and Its Cultural Background), Summer Session II, 2025
• Publication - Davis, John W., Brianna Brammer, Jessica L. Ding, Ross Perfetti, Randal A. Serafini, and Ammar D. Siddiqi. 2024. “Physician-Scientists Want to Address Social Determinants in Their Work – Are There Opportunities for Them to Train?” Journal of Scientific Innovation in Medicine 7 (1): 1. https://doi.org/10.29024/jsim.198.

Jeanne Lieberman

• Publication - Co-Published book, Reivinicando el archivo, custodiando la reivindicaciòn, July 2025

Nursyazwani Jamaludin 

• Publication - “Mobilizing Imagined Futures: Transnational Discourses of Social Mobility among Rohingya Refugees in Malaysia and Resettled Rohingya in Chicago.” For submission to Population, Space, and Place (Special Issue).
• Publication - Nursyazwani. 2025. “The Value of ‘Ummah’: Racio-Religious Capital and Rohingya Refugees’ World-Building.” Third World Quarterly, March, 1–19. doi:10.1080/01436597.2025.2469616.
• Teaching - Guest lecture at Universiti Malaya on Migration & Refugees (June 2025)

Matthew Capps

• Presentation - Fall 2024 - Southeastern Archaeological Conference Poster Presentation

Adwaita Banerjee

• Presentation - Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference 2025 (selection) - Fields of Translation: Knowledge, Culture, and Power in Contemporary India (organized panel)
• Presentation - American Anthropological Association - Multiscalar Violence and the Anthropocene, 2024

Hakimah Abdul-Fattah

• Publication - "Aid and the Help" in Transforming Anthropology
• Publication - Article on Gorèe Island in Penn Expedition Magazine
• Presentation - American Studies Association on panel on multimodality, research-based artworks

Abhi Sanghani

• Presentation - American Anthropological Association, panel with Dr. Charlotte Williams in Fall 2024, titled: “Ruins and Retrofits: Praxes of Mattering Past and Present.”