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

 

Summer 2026

Chelsea Cohen - July 17, 2026; 9:00AM-11:00AM

• Please Register in advanced for Chelsea Cohen's dissertation defense using the following link: https://upenn.zoom.us/meeting/register/y02D9L2FSbihFrSw6nD9Vw 

Rachael Stephens - July 10, 2026; 3:00PM-5:00PM

• Please Register in advanced for Rachael Stephens' dissertation defense using the following link: https://upenn.zoom.us/meeting/register/SWqHpOCcReyn3Lo27wnRMA 

Eric Hubbard

• Defense Date TBD

Robert Bryant

• Defense Date TBD

Chris LaMack

• Defense Date TBD

 

Fall 2026

Tayeba Batool

• Defense Date TBD

Rebecca Winkler

• Defense Date TBD

 

2026-2027 PhD Candidacy Examinations

Spring 2026

Marisa Kelath, Spring 2026

Gustavo Valenzuela, Spring 2026

Kaylani Manglona, Spring 2026

Kamalini Hegde, Spring 2026

Latoya Briscoe, Spring 2026

Nora Al-Aati, Spring 2026

 

Fall 2026

Anna Luurtsema, Date TBD

Alexandra Faeth, Date TBD

Jennifer Feng, Date TBD 

 

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2025-2026 Graduate Student Accolades

 

Ashlynn Arzola

National Science Foundation GRFP, 2026

 Dental Anthropology Association Student Research Support Grant, 2026 

 

Iona Hillman

National Science Foundation GRFP, 2026

 

Sooah Kwak

Robert Lemelson Foundation Fellowship, Society of Visual Anthropology, 2026

 

Nora Al-Aati

Kolb Society Junior Fellow, 2026

Wenner Gren, 2026

 

Latoya Briscoe

The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation Grant, 2026

Rodin Fellowship, 2026

Dissertation Research Award, 2026

 

Jennifer Feng

The Thomas Zwicker Memorial Fund, 2026

 

Anna Luurtsema

Heritage West Research Assistantship, 2026

 

Vivian Bi

The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation Grant, 2026

 

Nipun Kottage

The Thomas Zwicker Memorial Fund, 2026

 

Ankita Reddy

2026 Dean's Scholar Award

 

Alessandra Laurer Rosen

Dissertation Research Award, 2026

 

Abhi Sanghani

Rodin Fellowship, 2026

Turner Schulman Fellowship, 2026

The Thomas Zwicker Memorial Fund, 2026

 

Hakimah Abdul-Fattah

Kolb Society Junior Fellow, 2026

 

Katleho Shoro

Wolf Humanities Center Research Assistantship, 2026

  

Matthew Capps

Heritage West Research Assistantship, 2026

 

Nursyazwani Jamaludin

The Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy Graduate Fellowship, 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

• Teaching - Instructor of Record for ANTH 0020 - Anthropology, Race, and the Making of the Modern World

 Rachael Stephens

• 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)

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/

Chris LaMack

• 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 - “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.

Eric Hubbard

• 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]

Tayeba Batool

• 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.” 

Katleho Shoro

• 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/

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).

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