Current Graduate Students
Nicholas Ames
Nicholas holds a B.A. in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley (2013). His undergraduate research focused on the use of microartifactual data in interpreting archaeological households structures through use of space, social access, and trade networks between communities in Jordan.
At Notre Dame, Nicholas’ research focuses on the social and geographical development of historically marginalized communities during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Working primarily in Ireland and the USA, Nicholas is researching how Irish immigrants remanifested local communities within the context of industrial America. Further, he traces how immigrant social engagement transformed into the distinct Irish-American identities seen throughout the U.S. today. Nicholas aims to use the conflation of social, political, and economic events experienced by the Irish to further develop our understanding of contemporary social and political engagement of immigrant communities. Nicholas was awarded the Richard and Peggy Notebaert Premier Fellowship. Nicholas is a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowships Program (GRFP) and has advanced to candidacy.
Contact: 220A Corbett Family Hall, names@nd.edu
Sevda Arslan
Sevda holds an M.A. degree in political science from Western Michigan University where she also completed a year of graduate course work in the Anthropology Department. In 2013, Sevda received her B.A. degree in European Studies from Maastricht University, in the Netherlands.
At Notre Dame, Sevda focuses her research on language maintenance of minority languages, primarily focusing on Zazaki, a Kurdish language. Her research assesses how languages are impacted with the migration of Kurdish speaking communities between Turkey and Germany. This project expands upon work begun during her master’s degree studies and explores the ways in which language ideologies reproduce and reshape cultural identities, as well as reinforce economic and political power.
Contact: 290 Corbett Family Hall, sarslan@nd.edu
Ayşe Bursalı
Ayşe received her M.A. in Prehistoric Archaeology from Koç University in Turkey (2017), and her B.A. in Anthropology and Classics from McGill University in Montréal, Canada (2013). Her master’s thesis focused on identifying the material and colouring techniques of blue beads recovered from Barcın Höyük, a Neolithic settlement in northwest Turkey, as well as exploring their social significance and possibility for imitation.
Ayşe’s broader research interests include social inequality, personal ornamentation, exchange relations and identity. At Notre Dame Ayşe plans to keep studying ornamentation traditions of prehistoric Anatolia and the Near East, analyzing their implications for identity formation and community connections with the onset of agriculture in the Neolithic period ca. 9000 years ago.
Contact: 290 Corbett Family Hall, abursali@nd.edu
Amanda Cortez
Amanda earned a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Washington, where she wrote her honors thesis on human—other primate relationships in the contexts of a biomedical research facility, a zoo, and an animal sanctuary. This project focused on understanding how power structures allow for certain uses of primates in varying situations.
Her dissertation research will focus on the human—other primate interface in northern Peru to examine how local and western humans in the area perceive and relate to the yellow-tailed woolly monkey while also exploring how conservation could be both problematic and beneficial. Amanda is a Notre Dame Deans’ Fellow. Amanda has advanced to candidacy.
Contact: Amanda.D.Cortez.14@nd.edu
Emily de Wet
Emily de Wet holds a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Wheaton College (MA), where she wrote her senior thesis on the contestation of power and representation in township tourism in Langa Township, Cape Town, South Africa.
Emily continues to work in Cape Town, approaching townships as not solely defined by material poverty and marginality, but instead, as socially productive spaces. For her dissertation research, she is studying township ‘vibes’: the emotive and intangible aspects of daily life that her interlocutors use to express feelings of ‘belonging’ and ‘becoming’ in township spaces. Her work is theoretically situated within anthropological approaches to power and the construction of ‘centers and margins’, cultural poetics, place making, phenomenology and racial experience as embodied difference. Emily is a Kellogg Institute PhD Student Fellow and has advanced to candidacy.
Contact: Emily.J.deWet.1@nd.edu
Persephone Dshaun
Persephone is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology and a recipient of Notre Dame’s Dean’s Fellowship. She holds a B.A. in Medical Anthropology and Global Health from the University of Washington. She is interested in how social contexts shape biology and health outcomes, and her research interests include whiteness and race, lived experience, epigenetics, stress, and health and disease. Persephone’s dissertation research centers on Trinidad, where she is investigating whiteness, stress, epigenetic marks, and health outcomes. She is also interested in the relationship between whiteness and hypermasculinity in the context of gender violence. She is a Notre Dame Deans’ Fellow. Persephone has advanced to candidacy.
Contact: 294 Corbett Family Hall, idshaun@nd.edu
Katrina Elkins
Katrina holds a B.A. in Biological Anthropology and History from the University of California, Santa Barbara (2016). Her undergraduate research was primarily focused in bioarchaeology and stable isotope analysis, reconstructing linked patterns of ancient diet and mobility in the Peruvian Andes. Katrina’s senior honors thesis addressed ethnographic and isotopic studies of prehistoric weaning behavior and employed stable isotopes as a dietary tracer of infant feeding practices.
At Notre Dame, Katrina intends to explore patterns of nutrition, trauma, and disease in skeletal populations. Her research will employ bioarchaeological and stable isotopic methods in order to investigate the relationship between stressors during early life and health and mortality in adulthood. She seeks in particular to examine unequal social structures stemming from increased population and sociopolitical complexity in response to agricultural intensification, and how such resulting health disparities have the capacity to become biologically embedded, influencing wellbeing over the life course. Katrina is a Notre Dame Dean’s Fellow.
Contact: 208 Corbett Family Hall, kelkins@nd.edu
Deniz Enverova
Deniz holds a BA from San Jose State Universit and an MA from Bilkent University in archaeology. She focused on social complexity and collapse , as well bioarchaeological methods. She worked at excavations in Turkey and Bulgaria.
At Notre Dame Deniz will study social complexity and urbanization in the context of mortuary practices in Anatolia from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age, while integrating archaeological and bioarchaeological analysis. Deniz is a Notre Dame Presidential Fellow and has advanced to candidacy.
Contact: 208 Corbett Family Hall, denverov@nd.edu
Sean Field
Sean received his M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and holds a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Northern-Colorado. His master’s thesis focused on a geospatial analysis of the Chacoan road system, clarifying potential use strategies of regional prehispanic roads. This work involved ideas and methods regarding predictive pathway modeling, legacy data, remote sensing, landscape analysis, and optimal movement strategies.
At Notre Dame, Sean intends to explore interregional relationships throughout the Southwest, particularly focusing on associations between Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde. His work aims to expand on both intended and consequential connections between these places, with a focus on motility, community development, and ceremonial landscapes. Sean is a Notre Dame Presidential Fellow.
Contact: 232 Corbett Family Hall, sfield2@nd.edu
Patrick Finnigan
Patrick Finnigan holds a BA in Anthropology from Indiana University in South Bend, where he was the winner of the 2016 Linda Marie Fritschner Award for Excellence in Research. Patrick's undergraduate research involved archaeological sites in South Bend's urban historic district ranging from a former pioneer corner grocery to the industrialist Studebaker family.
At Notre Dame, Patrick will focus on industrial archaeology and urban abandonment. He also has research interests in urban archaeology and Rust Belt anthropology, as well as Gilded and Progressive Age history in the Great Lakes area. Patrick's research applications include utilizing historical information to foster a sense of place and community in abandoned urban areas, while preserving the many cultures and identities that have occupied these sites over time. Patrick also intends to work with groups such as the Union of Concerned Scientists to ensure that his research supports environmentally sustainable and historically responsible preservation of urban and industrial structures.
Contact: 208 Corbett Family Hall, pfinnig1@nd.edu
Rieti Gengo (anthropology & peace studies)
Rieti’s most recent research centers on Kakuma Refugee Camp in northern Kenya, where he studies social and political invisibility, health, and economic behavior & integration, and resilience in both the refugee population and the pastoralist Turkana host community. He is also interested in the complex and often contentious relationships between refugees and hosts. He explores these topics through ethnographic participant observation, social network analysis, health and nutritional assessment, and physiological biomarkers. Rieti is a Notre Dame Presidential Fellow, and his dissertation research is supported by a National Science Foundation DDRIG and a Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant. Rieti has advanced to candidacy.
Contact: Rieti.G.Gengo.1@nd.edu
Kristina Hook (anthropology and peace studies)
Kristina Hook earned an M.A. degree in international development and a graduate certificate in humanitarian assistance from the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies and a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Florida. She served as a Policy Officer in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations and a Political/Economic Officer in a U.S. Embassy abroad. In 2013, she was awarded a U.S. Presidential Management Fellowship.
Kristina is currently a Fellow with the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF-GRFP). She has published on topics including genocide, mass violence, post-conflict reconstruction, humanitarian lessons learned and methods of merging theory and practice in sustainable development programming. Her research interests include causal explanations of mass violence and mass killings, as well as how emerging micro-level research may be used to design more robust genocide diagnostic frameworks.
For her dissertation, Kristina is conducting fieldwork in Ukraine on the violence dynamics of the Soviet-era Holodomor mass atrocities and how this legacy continues to ripple across modern Ukrainian society. Since coming to Notre Dame, Kristina has also presented her research and participated in field schools in locations including Germany, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Czech Republic. Kristina has advanced to candidacy.
Kristina is a Kellogg Ph.D. Fellow.
Contact: khook@nd.edu
Kayla Hurd
Kayla holds a M.A. in Anthropology from Wayne State University, and an American Chemical Society certified B.S. in Chemistry, with a double minor in Archaeology and Criminal Justice, from Grand Valley State University. After various research projects in synthetic biochemistry, archaeology, and cultural anthropology, her passion for combining these techniques, and ultimately, the field of biomedical anthropology prevailed. Her interests include traditional medicine, pharmaceutical design and resistance, evolutionary medicine, and the application of chemistry within medical anthropology.
At Notre Dame, Kayla plans to continue research involving chemical analyses of edible insects in aims of combating nutritional deficiencies such as anemia. This work stems from her involvement with the “Eating Insects Detroit: Exploring the Culture of Insects as Food and Feed” international conference that was held in 2016. She intends to provide a comprehensive nutritional analysis of edible insects as a way to justify the ecological benefits of farming insects as both food and medicine as well as relinquish the stigma that insects hold in society. More broadly, she wants to explore non-human actors (like insects and other micro-organisms) and their relationship with human diseases. Kayla is a Notre Dame Deans’ Fellow.
Contact: 208 Corbett Family Hall, khurd@nd.edu
Jelena Jankovic-Rankovic
Jelena holds an M. A. degree in International Peace Studies from University of Notre Dame and an M.A. degree in Strategies and Methods of Non-violent Social Change from University of Belgrade. She received her B. A. from University of Belgrade, majoring in Special Education and Rehabilitation.
Jelena’s research will focus on the complexity of migration by comparing and contrasting experiences of encamped and transitory refugees in Sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe. Specifically, she will examine the patterns of integration and exclusion of encamped and transitory refugees within the host communities, focusing on the dynamics within both groups and interaction between the host communities and refugees. Her research also entails human behavior, poverty, development, gender, peace, conflict and violence as they affect lives of refugees migrating to developed nations, and encamped refugees, particularly in socio-politically instable countries. Jelena is a Notre Dame Initiative for Global Development (NDIGD) Research Fellow.
Contact: 206 Corbett Family Hall, jjankovi@nd.edu
Symone Johnson
Symone holds a B.A. in psychology from Spelman College (2017). Her thesis research focused on sexual health, exploring the ways in which sexual attitudes and partner communication contributed to informing the sexual decision making processes and affective outcomes of young adults.
Symone's anthropological inquiries concern the development of contemporary spiritualities within Post-Civil Rights Era Black American activist communities. She seeks to understand the ways in which these groups' evolving political/social and spiritual identities intersect as well as how they inform one another in such a way that allows the two identities to exist symbiotically. Symone is a Notre Dame Presidential Fellow.
Contact: 206 Corbett Family Hall, sjohns39@nd.edu
Angela Lederach (anthropology & peace studies)
Research Interests:Angela earned B.A. degrees in anthropology and peace studies from Notre Dame. After graduating, she received a fellowship to research reconciliation efforts in Sierra Leone. This research, combined with undergraduate research she conducted with the West African Network for Peacebuilding, culminated in the co-authorship of her book When Blood and Bones Cry Out: Journeys Through the Soundscape of Healing and Reconciliation.
Angela Lederach's research explores the discursive, embodied, and social practices of grassroots peacebuilding employed by the Movimiento Pacífico de la Alta Montaña in rural Colombia. In particular, she is investigating how multigenerational relationships – through which connection to land, to history, and to self emerge – are (re)imagined and (re)created in the context of a destroyed environment. Her research interests broadly include social movements, violence, peace, environment, forced displacement and migration. Angie has advanced to candidacy. She received a Fulbright Fellowship for her dissertation research.
Contact: 290 Corbett Family Hall, (574) 631-4744 alederach@gmail.com
Richard Marcantonio (anthropology & peace studies)
Drew holds a Master of Public Affairs degree from Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) (2016) and a B.A. in Geography and the Environment from the University of Texas at Austin (2009). Prior to beginning his graduate work at SPEA, he served in the United States Marine Corps as an Infantry Officer and Foreign Military Advisor in Afghanistan. During his graduate studies he led a research project in Zambia, working with smallholder farmers to understand local level perceptions of, and responses to, water scarcity.
Drew is interested in natural and human ecology in developing countries, behavioral change and adaptive capacity under the stress of climate change, and the potential relationship between conflict and the impacts of climate change. Drew was awarded the Richard and Peggy Notebaert Premier Fellowship.
Contact: 206 Corbett Family Hall, richard.a.marcantonio.3@nd.edu
Todd Marek
Todd holds a B.A. degree in anthropology from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He has also completed a degree in Traditional Tibetan Medicine from the Shang Shung Institute of America School of Tibetan Medicine, as well as studies in advanced topics of Tibetan Medicine at the Qīnghǎi University College of Tibetan Medicine and a clinical internship at the Qīnghǎi Tibetan Medical Hospital in Xīning, China.
At Notre Dame, Todd plans to draw on theoretical and methodological approaches of linguistic and medical anthropology in order to research the dialectical relationship between changing language practices and emergent forms of medical practice amongst Amdo Tibetans living in Qīnghǎi Province, China. Todd is broadly interested in linguistic, sociocultural, and medical anthropology, semiotics, language and cognition, Tibetan Medicine and the historical and ethnographic literature on Tibet and China. Todd has advanced to candidacy. He received a Fulbright Fellowship for his dissertation research.
Contact: Todd.P.Marek.10@nd.edu
Sara Morrow
Contact: Sara.G.Morrow.40@nd.edu
Charles Morse
Charles holds a B.A. in both Anthropology and Near Eastern Studies from the University of California, Berkeley (2014). His undergraduate research focused on the notion of sedentism and its application to archaeological contexts. His thesis proposed redefining sedentism through semiotics and practice theory so mobility could be discussed in pre-urban mortuary contexts in Bab adh-Dhra’ Jordan.
At Notre Dame, Charles’ research focuses on expanding our knowledge of the protohistoric--between the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age--of the southern Levant through integrative approaches to archaeological contexts. Concomitantly, his theoretical focus centers on mobility, semiotics, practice, and landscape based approaches to material culture. After modifying and analyzing the database of materials from Bab adh-Dhra’, he will be working toward a more complete picture of the transition to and from Urbanism in the Southern Levant. In modern application, Charles’ work focuses on the dynamics of power and identity as it relates to imposed organization on cultural practice--such of ‘legitimized’ forms of mobility and immigration.
Contact: 232 Corbett Family Hall, cmorse2@nd.edu
Brandon Moskun
Brandon holds an M.A. in social anthropology from York University (2017) and a B.S. in anthropology and history from Central Michigan University (2014). His undergraduate research focused on the daily habits of university students with ADHD as well as global variations and understandings of attention disorders. His master’s research focused on digital anthropology and discourse of individuals living with psychiatric comorbidity.
At Notre Dame, Brandon’s research focuses on the activity surrounding study drug use by university students to enhance academic performance as well as the wider social entanglements these drugs are placed in. He seeks to develop an understanding of how pharmaceuticals and educational institutions work to produce certain type of citizens as morally responsible actors. First, through an examination of the ways in which the structure of the American university may contribute to the use of study drugs via student mental health services and the high pressure to attain competitive grades and how this may put youth at risk. And secondly how parents, faculty, or the bureaucracy of the university understand the use of study enhancement drugs and/or inadvertently facilitate in the creation of a study drug environment. Brandon also seeks to develop cross-cultural comparisons of study drug use between North American universities and Nordic universities, seeing Nordic universities as potential rich sites of contrast and comparison in relationship between higher education, study drug use, university students, and health-care systems.
Contact: 294 Corbett Family Hall, bmoskun@nd.edu
Jeffrey Peterson
Jeffrey V. Peterson holds an M.A. in anthropology from San Diego State University (2012) and a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (2008). From 2010-2011, Jeffrey conducted research as a Fulbright scholar on perceptions of macaque sacredness among Balinese transmigrants in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. After graduating with his master’s degree, Jeffrey taught an online introductory biocultural anthropology course as a lecturer at San Diego State University (2013-2014).
Jeffrey’s research interests are in nonhuman primate cognition and social behavior. His dissertation research focuses on communication and other forms of social interaction among long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) in Bali, Indonesia. Jeffrey is motivated by theoretical approaches to communication from primatology, sociocultural anthropology, and linguistic anthropology. He is employing an integrated theoretical and methodological framework drawing upon work from these fields in his dissertation research. Jeffrey has advanced to candidacy and is a Notre Dame Presidential Fellow and Irwin Press Fellow. His dissertation research is supported by a National Geographic Society Waitt Grant.
Contact: jpeter18@nd.edu
Julia Prince-Buitenhuys
Julia received her M.A. in Anthropology from California State University Chico (2016) and her B.A. in anthropology with a focus on archaeology at University of California San Diego (2010). At Chico, Julia’s primary work was in stable isotope analysis, bioarchaeology, and forensic anthropology. Her master’s thesis looked at ethnic dietary variation at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center Potter’s Field (circa 1870-1935) using stable isotope analysis and skeletal ancestry estimation methods.
Julia’s broader research interests include social inequality, diet and migration reconstruction, dietary stress and disease, and identity formation. At Notre Dame, Julia will use stable isotope analysis and bioarchaeological methods to research the consequences of unequal social structures on diet, health, and social identity in the historic U.S. She also plans to continue research in stable isotopic and forensic anthropological methods and applications. Julia is a Notre Dame Presidential Fellow.
Contact: 290 Corbett Family Hall, jprinceb@nd.edu
Kelsey Reese
Kelsey received her M.A. in Anthropology from Washington State University, and holds a B.A. in Political Science and Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her master’s research focused on defining an extent of daily-interacting households through time in Mesa Verde National Park of southwestern Colorado. Kelsey’s research utilizes large-scale, geo-spatial analyses to analyze settlement patterns on the landscape.
At Notre Dame, Kelsey plans to continue her research focusing on community and interaction in the Mesa Verde region by expanding to include levels of organization beyond daily-interacting households to define a scale of common identity within the larger region. Kelsey is a Notre Dame Presidential Fellow.
Contact: 232 Corbett Family Hall, Kelsey.M.Reese.19@nd.edu
Joyce Rivera-González
Joyce holds a B.Sc. degree in Integrative Biology from the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras. During her undergraduate career she volunteered as a student assistant at the Caribbean Primate Research Center in Sabana Seca, where she worked in behavioral assessment of rhesus macaques that were housed in the station.
At Notre Dame, she intends to explore the interaction between human populations and free-ranging nonhuman primates, particularly regarding introduced rhesus macaque and patas monkey populations in southwestern Puerto Rico. Her research intends to comprehend how these species interject into the daily lives of local communities, as well as how this interaction influences foraging activity and population dispersion, among other behavioral ecology facets yet to be explored. At the field, she will be integrating traditional primate field studies with multispecies ethnography among farmers and tourism facilities that encounter lone foragers every so often – if only ephemerally. Joyce is a Kinesis-Fernández Richards Fellow.
Contact: 294 Corbett Family Hall, jriverag@nd.edu
Patricia Rodrigues
Patrícia holds a M.A. in Archaeology and Territory and a B.A. in Archaeology and History from the University of Coimbra, Portugal. During this period, Patricia worked as junior researcher in the Coimbra UNESCO World Heritage Center. Her research focused on medieval ceramics, urban archaeology and landscape analysis. In Brazil, she completed a year of graduate course work in the University of São Paulo’s Archaeology and Ethnography program, focusing on Indigenous Archaeology and ethnoarchaeological approaches. She has since been working as a researcher and scientific coordinator of Indigenous cultural preservation projects for the Brazilian Mandkind Institute, a NGO devoted to heritage valorization.
At Notre Dame, Patrícia’s research assesses the historical and anthropological bases for indigenous claims to territory and legal protection of archaeological sites and ecological resources in Brazil. She addresses problems in the politics of ethnic identity and academia’s role in the enforcement of indigenous rights to land and cultural self-determination, through an integrative approach to time, materiality and discourse. Specifically, she is interested in exploring cultural conceptions of time, space and materiality, narrative means of representing those concepts and how these relate to archaeological heritage culturally specific historicities, group identity construction and intergenerational reproduction in Amerindian societies. Patrícia is a Kellogg Institute Fellow.
Contact; 208 Corbett Family Hall, prodrig5@nd.edu
Maryam Rokhideh (anthropology & peace studies)
Maryam holds a master’s degree in Conflict Resolution from the University of Bradford and a Bachelors degree in International Studies with minors in Conflict Resolution and Comparative Literature from the University of California, Irvine. Maryam has worked with post-conflict populations in Cameroon, Rwanda, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia, and South Korea on issues of alternative dispute resolution, sexual and gender-based violence, and psychosocial recovery.
Maryam’s research interests center on the interdisciplinary interactions between medical anthropology and peace studies. Her research focuses on the human experience of violence with a particular emphasis on the social and political forces that construct conditions of suffering and post-conflict recovery. Maryam is a Notre Dame Presidential Fellow and has advanced to candidacy.
Contact: 206 Corbett Family Hall, mrokhide@nd.edu
Mallika Sarma
Mallika holds a B.S. in Psychology & Evolutionary Anthropology from the University of Michigan (2014). Her undergraduate research includes: the growth and maintenance of creativity in disparate environments, effects of STEM field stereotypes on mate choice, and mindfulness and health in immigrant populations.
At Notre Dame, Mallika’s research focuses on human developmental plasticity, niche construction, and physiological adaptation to extreme environments, specifically high altitude environments. Mallika is currently a NSF Graduate Research Fellow and also holds the Notre Dame Dean's Fellowship. Mallika has advanced to candidacy.
Contact: 232 Corbett Family Hall, msarma@nd.edu
Ann Marie Thornburg
Ann Marie Thornburg holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers' Program where she was also a Zell Postgraduate Fellow in Poetry. Ann Marie was also a Human-Animal Studies Fellow at Wesleyan University.
At Notre Dame Ann Marie will investigate human and free-ranging dog relations, focusing on questions of transience and mobility. She will also consider public health and other formal and informal management and care practices that emerge in relation and response to free-ranging dogs. Ann Marie is a Notre Dame Presidential Fellow.
Contact: 206 Corbett Family Hall, athornb1@nd.edu