Emily Nisch is a first year PhD student in the anthropology department at Michigan State University focusing on community engaged digital heritage and archaeology, and the archaeology of Native American boarding schools. She is an advisee of Dr. Watrall.

Emily has a B.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John's College, Annapolis, a degree in theology from Duke University, and an MLitt with distinction in archaeological studies from the University of the Highlands in Islands. Prior to MSU, she worked in Orkney, Scotland, and in the southeastern United States. For her MLitt thesis she researched use-wear on worked shell artifacts at a Woodland site in North Carolina.

In 2023 she joined the National Endowment for the Humanities funded Networking Archaeological Data and Communities (NEH-NADAC) cohort.