Department of Anthropology

  • Featured Faculty, Dr. Lucero Radonic

    Featured Faculty, Dr. Lucero Radonic
    Dr. Radonic in the desert

    Dr. Lucero Radonic, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, joined the department in 2014. Her research centers around the human/environment interaction within urban landscapes. More specifically, the human governance of changing landscapes, the ways nature is transformed for human use and how we make decisions about the distribution of natural resources within dynamic, urban environments.

    morning in the Sonora Desert Arizona
    Early morning in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, United States

    In Arizona, where she grew up, water has always fascinated her and was ever present in conversations. Her fondness for the desert environment lead her to pursue her BS in environmental sciences in 2005 from the University of Texas El Paso. It was during her early studies that Lucero quickly discovered that while she enjoyed spending time outside in the forest and the mountains, she had other questions about the role of humans in those beautiful (or destroyed) environments. There was little room for the exploration of these issues within the realm of environmental sciences. During a research fellowship in Hawaii, she got to hike the forest daily on a military site and collect seed samples. As beautiful as the landscape was, the constant avoidance of undetonated missiles and feral pigs led her back to the lab each day and the realization that there was little room for questioning or explaining the human angle within all this work. The lab work did not allow her the freedom to answer some of her own questions such as, what are the stories of these seeds, nor did it allow her to speak to people and find out why these seeds were important to them.

    Given her interest in the role of humans within the environment during her undergraduate tenure, Dr. Radonic began taking anthropology classes where she discovered the book, Pigs for the Ancestors by Rappaport. After reading it, she was amazed and fascinated by the ways it dealt with themes of population growth, animal husbandry, ritual, and warfare. All of these topics were interwoven in such a fluid way that it made her want to read more anthropology. These issues began to make her question the politics of the environment and helped her decide she wanted to approach human/environmental interactions from the human perspective rather than the environmental one. Issues like these led her to pursue anthropology for her graduate education. She received her PhD from the University of Arizona in 2014.

    Currently, Dr. Radonic has several projects she is working on but her larger one examines green infrastructure in cities – man made infrastructure that tries to emulate natural flows.  She is interested in how people’s relationship to nature in cities changes through urbanization. In Arizona, for example, policy makers and residents are reconceptualizing what rainwater is, especially as her home state confronts prolonged drought and all states continue to battle over water rights. Until recently in Arizona, rainwater was a problem to be controlled so it did not cause chaos through flooding; now, it has become a resource. The conceptualization of rainwater has switched from it being a contaminated nuisance that must be removed to it now being considered a renewable resource that should be harnessed and collected. People are changing both their conceptualization of what water resources are as well as how we are governing them when confronted by climate change and urban expansion. This shift in the mindset of urban governance fascinates her and offers possibilities for collaboration with cities. This is where Dr. Radonic hopes her research will have an impact. Her research with this new project has the potential to make actual change in urban policies and impact people’s lives.

    two women in the central market in Hermosillo Sonora Mexico
    Lucero catching up in the central market, Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico

    Dr. Radonic finds this a fascinating change from previous projects, also centered around water rights and water access, involving indigenous water rights in Mexico where her work had little hope of impacting people. Primarily because it is hard to have an impact when the people you work with are not able to help make the decisions about water infrastructure. One of her goals as an anthropology professor is to learn (and then teach others) how to communicate better with people outside out the field and with the public so that anthropology can have a broader impact. Lucero finds the most potential power in these issues lies in collaborative projects where people are part of both the decision-making process and implementation.

    Lucero’s favorite aspect of her job is getting to be outside and interacting with people, both of which she enjoys immensely. Her previous research dealt with water rights and political activism, topics that often-had people concerned and hesitant to speak about the issues she was involved with. In her current research on water management and concepts of water, people are excited, wanting to talk about news ways to utilize and conserve water. The ability to switch her research focus to how we are conceptualizing and managing water from the political confrontations over water rights allows her to deal with places of hope, excitement, and possibility, instead of places of despair and hesitance — she enjoys this immensely. Here at MSU, one of the things she likes most about our department is enjoying happy hour with her colleagues. She particularly appreciates the fluidity in conversation between the various subfields of our discipline and feels that the current faculty strive to make sure we all converse about ways our research relates to each other so that no feels excluded. Dr. Radonic enjoys her colleagues and loves her job here at MSU.

    Tagua Reserve Chile
    Dr. Lucero Radonic taking it all in; Tagua Tagua Reserve, Los Lagos Region, Chile

    When not researching, writing or teaching, Lucero enjoys hiking, biking, and just generally loves being outdoors as much as possible. Cross country skiing is a new activity she has been exploring, although coming from a desert environment, the cold is something she struggles to enjoy. Anything that takes her outdoors and involves elevational changes is at the top of her list so she truly enjoys exploring Michigan. Photography is also something she readily appreciates, and she finds no shortage of subject material along the River Trail here on campus. She is currently rereading Jim Harrison’s True North, a book by a native Michigander from Grayling, describing his love for his home state’s environment. Dr. Radonic says it helps her understand how people can love the cold as much as she loves the heat, one of the reasons she enjoys reading fiction and historical nonfiction. Look for her upcoming publications in Economic Anthropology and Water Alternatives, which should be out by January.

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  • Featured Graduate Student, Autumn Painter

    Autumn Painter, a graduate student here in the Department of Anthropology, specializing in archaeology was provided the opportunity to travel with Dr. Marcy O’Neil, an anthropology alumna and grant support staff and former instructor in the department, to Benin, West Africa during the summer of 2018. In collaboration with the Department of Anthropology and the African Studies Center, both here at MSU, Ms. Painter and Dr. O’Neil celebrated the launch of the second volume of a project called Books That Bind at the US Embassy in Cotonou. Autumn became a part of this project during her assistantship in Lab for Education and Advancement in Digital Research (LEADR), and continued to be involved with it following her assistantship.

    Books That Bind was created by Three Sisters and the Three Sisters Education Fund (TSEF), who provide tutoring scholarships to underserved students in Benin. This project creates bi-lingual storybooks. The first volume of books was created by MSU undergraduate students in Dr. O’Neil’s class in Spring 2017. In addition to the launch at the US Embassy, they also worked on getting the second volume of books printed and signed by the storytellers, and participants in the book making process, and did a launch at one of the communities with which Three Sisters works. The experience was something that Ms. Painter never thought she would have the opportunity to participate in and in doing so, learned much from Dr. O’Neil and the anthropologists (& their family and friends) in Benin. Ms. Painter is thankful that the Department of Anthropology, and her mentors within the department (Dr. O’Gorman, Dr. Goldstein, Dr. Camp, and Dr. Watrall) have always encouraged and supported her ideas and goals and provided her with the support, advice, and the opportunities to reach them.

    Ms. Painter’s general research interests lay in foodways and social interactions in prehistory. Her proposed dissertation research will focus on these concepts at a Mississippian and Oneota village site, the Morton Village, located in west-central Illinois during a known time of violence. Using this site, she hopes to gain a better understanding of the relationship between the two groups that occupied this site at the same time through the analysis of the faunal remains (i.e. food sharing and social interaction).

    Autumn first became interested in archaeology and anthropology in elementary school when she attended the Hiawatha National Forest’s Youth Archaeology Workshop on Grand Island (run by Jon Franzen, Jim Skibo [Illinois State University], and Eric Drake [MSU Anthropology Alumnus]). She ended up applying and attending this 2-day workshop every summer from 5th grade through her senior year of high school and continued to volunteer for the Hiawatha National Forest whenever the opportunity arose.

    This led her to pursue her undergraduate studies here at MSU, where she majored in Anthropology before attending Illinois State University for her Masters degree. Here she found a passion for faunal analysis and using a comparative skeletal collection to identify animal bone fragments form archaeological sites. Her love for her native state led her back to MSU for her graduate studies, where she is currently the Campus Archaeologist. This position allows her to continually interact with the public and participate in archaeological outreach events. Talking and interacting with the general public about archaeology is always a lot of fun for her and she finds that it is great to hear their questions and the different ways they think about our research and the artifacts we uncover.

    Autumn’s long term career goals are to either be a professor teaching classes and conducting her own research in collaboration with the park service/forest service, or working for a museum/research collection center. She feels that MSU has and is preparing her by giving her the many opportunities to learn and experience a multitude of interactions that have shaped her into an anthropologist. These experiences include her assistantships within the department as a teaching assistant, a research assistant in the Lab for Education and Advancement in Digital Research (LEADR), a research assistant as the Campus Archaeologist, the Cultural Heritage Informatics Fellowship, and the Campus Archaeology Program Fellowship.

    Aside from her dissertation research, Autumn has many upcoming projects and articles in the works. She is co-author on an article in review in for the journal Ethnoarchaeology entitled “Acorn Processing and Pottery Use in the Upper Great Lakes: An Experimental Comparison of Stone Boiling and Ceramic Technology” with Kelsey E. Hanson, Paula L. Bryant, Autumn M. Painter, and James M. Skibo. She is working on an oral history project with Alice Lynn McMichael (LEADR) on the Campus Archaeology Program to be launched in the spring of 2019. Also be sure the take a look at her latest website about an early food project on MSU’s campus: Capturing Campus Cuisine.

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  • Message from the Chair: Dr. Jodie O’Gorman

    Dr Jodie O'Gorman

    At this time of the semester, when we stop to take stock of what we’ve done over the past year, I’m always inspired and astounded at the breadth and scope of the research done by our graduate students, faculty, and undergraduates in the Department of Anthropology.

    We have many examples of faculty mentors publishing with their students, including Dr. Tetreault and graduate student Sarah Tahir who co-authored with two physicians an article appearing in the Journal of Muslim Mental Health based upon research conducted after the 2016 election on American Muslim women’s responses to rising Islamophobia. Dr. Hefner mentored his first year PhD student, Micayla Spiros, through writing her first article that was published in Forensic Anthropology. Dr. Fenton and graduate student Mari Isa and associates recently published on their research in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. Drs. Howard and Hunt mentored undergraduate student Funmi Odumosu and graduate student Anna Martinez-Hume on an article that appeared in Medical Anthropology.

    Recently, our two newest archaeology faculty members, Dr. Stacey Camp and Dr. Kurt Rademaker were in China and Peru (respectively) over the semester break for research. Dr. Gabriel Wrobel is doing research in Australia this semester during his sabbatical.

    Graduate student Emily Milton, who came with Dr. Rademaker from Northern Illinois University to finish her master’s degree, was just awarded a Sigma Xi Grant in Aid of Research for her MA thesis project entitled, “Incremental micro-analysis of enamel to reconstruct end-of-life history and season of death for South American camelids: Implications for archaeology and paleoclimatology.” Emily is one of only six anthropology students nationwide to be awarded a Sigma Xi grant on this cycle.

    As I write this, one of our advanced undergraduates is attending and presenting at the Society for Historical Archaeology meeting, his first professional conference. While these are recent examples of our more advanced students and faculty members’ engagement with research and mentorship of research, I also want to note the wonderful mentorship of Dr. Lynnette King and other faculty members who worked with undergraduate students on research projects over the past year. Dr. King organized our second annual Anthropology Undergraduate Research Showcase that took place just before break and it was a huge success – we had 37 posters and 51 presenters on topics in all subfields. Along with many other faculty members and graduate students, I thoroughly enjoyed talking with the undergraduates about their presentations. The excitement that the undergraduates have for anthropology and their enthusiasm for applying an anthropological perspective to the world’s issues is truly inspiring.

    Thank you for your interest in the department, and many thanks to those that have reached out to help our students attend conferences and otherwise support their research.

    Please find our giving link here.

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  • New Graduate Program Director

    The Department of Anthropology is pleased to announce Associate Professor and affiliated faculty member of the American Indian and Indigenous Studies program, Dr. Mindy Morgan is our new Graduate Program Director. Dr. Morgan previously held the position of Associate Chair and enjoyed having input on department policies and practices and when this position arose, it seemed like another opportunity for her to be able to help shape the direction of our program. After having the opportunity to teach the incoming core theory course for many years, Dr. Morgan always enjoyed getting to know the incoming students and to help them create a supportive cohort. She misses this opportunity now that another faculty teach the course. Dr. Morgan sees the Graduate Program Director role as a way of not only continuing that work, but to be involved in students’ careers as they move through the program. Having always enjoyed serving on graduate committees and learning about the diverse and exciting work our students are doing, she views this new position as a good way of engaging with an even wider range of students.

    Some of the new directions Dr. Morgan wants to steer the graduate program in are to have more engagement with our alumni and to engage in more conversations about career opportunities and trajectories. Our program has had success in placing people in highly rewarding academic positions, but we have also had great success in placing graduates in non-academic settings. Given the difficulties of the current academic job market, she intends to facilitate more conversations about non-academic positions and to hopefully create wider career networks for our graduates. Dr. Morgan also anticipates developing a more responsive curriculum, allowing students to take the seminars they need to move through the program in a timely way. Part of moving through the program in a timely fashion is to help students connect with other sources of funding and to provide the support they need to successfully secure funding in a changing funding environment. Lastly, she would like to see a more strategic recruiting program put in place where we can encourage a greater number of students to consider applying to the anthropology department.

    Dr. Morgan has always said that Anthropology found her. She has always loved stories for the wisdom they contain as well as for the community created through their telling. She never knew how to articulate this fascination until she discovered anthropology late in her undergraduate career as an American Culture major. She decided that she needed some disciplinary rigor in which to shape her interests and anthropology provided that framework. Dr. Morgan went on to complete her PhD in 2001 from Indiana University in Bloomington in anthropology. When on the job market before coming to MSU, she found the most challenging thing about the graduate student to job transition was that there is quite a bit of institutional knowledge required that must be learned quickly in order to be effective at the College and University levels. During her short time as Graduate Program Director, she has already learned a great deal about how the College of Social Sciences and the Graduate School work. She now applies this knowledge to her own advising and helps students navigate the university more effectively.

    Being a true academic at heart, one of her favorite things about our department is that almost every day I am learning something new about a place or topic I have not encountered before. Due to the range of expertise and interests among our faculty as well as our graduate students, every day brings something new. There is no normal “routine.” Dr. Morgan’s favorite thing about her position is the enjoyment she gets from working with students directly both in advising and through workshops. She also enjoys working with incoming students to help introduce and acclimate them to MSU and the department. The best part for her, however, is attending the advanced degree program and seeing our students walk across the stage to receive their diplomas. It is immensely satisfying to see students complete their degrees and move on to new and exciting endeavors.

    Outside of academia, Dr. Morgan has few hobbies but she is passionate about her family, supporting the performing arts (especially dance), and traveling (for purposes other than research).

    On the horizon, Dr. Morgan is working on a book manuscript regarding the periodical Indians at Work, but has also been readily enjoying a small detour into the history of Anthropology. She has an article regarding Ruth Underhill coming out in the Histories of Anthropology Annual (Vol. 13) next year. Dr. Morgan truly hopes to have a positive impact on our department’s future and we look forward to further research and graduates as she continues her career with us.

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  • Monir Moniruzzaman Selected for WHO Task Force

    Monir Moniruzzaman Selected for WHO Task Force

    The Department of Anthropology is pleased to announce that Monir Moniruzzaman, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, has been selected by the World Health Organization to serve on the Task Force on Donation and Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues.

    As a member of the Task Force, Moniruzzaman will advise and assist the Word Health Organization in developing a sustainable transplant system in order to combat organ trafficking and transplant tourism.

    Moniruzzaman’s specific task force includes 31 members from various countries, including experts in medicine, surgery, ethics, law, patients’ rights, public administration, and health systems.

    Moniruzzaman was chosen for the task force because of his longstanding and renowned research on organ trafficking in Bangladesh.

    Photo by Kurt Stepnitz

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  • Emily Milton awarded a Sigma Xi Grant in Aid of Research

    The Department of of Anthropology is pleased to announce that grad student Emily Milton has been awarded a Sigma Xi Grant in Aid of Research for her MA thesis project.

    The goal of the project is to develop a method to approximate the season of death for South American camelids (the wild ancestors of the llama and alpaca) found in archaeological sites. To do this, the work matches the isotopic values captured in single teeth to the environmental values which vary between dry and wet seasons of the year. If successful, the project will provide a way for archaeologists to estimate the season(s) that high-altitude archaeological sites in the Central Andes were occupied. Ultimately, the project will improve how archaeologists understand mobility strategies employed by the first Americans to settle the Andes.

    Emily is one of only six anthropology students nationwide to be awarded a Sigma Xi grant on this cycle

    More information on her research and the research of the Interdisciplinary Working Group on Early Andean Settlement Dynamics and Adaptation can be found at https://www.paleoandes.com/

    Emily shows Glacial Geologist, Dr. Gordon Bromley (National University of Ireland, Galway), how to determine the species of a camelid skull while on survey in the high Andes.

  • Ethan Watrall Part of Team Awarded a European Cooperation of Science & Technology Grant

    The Department of Anthropology is pleased to announced that Assistant Professor Ethan Watrall is part of a team that was recently awarded a European Cooperation of Science & Technology grant for the Saving European Archaeology from the Digital Dark Age (SEADDA) Project. The project is based on the premise that while making archaeological data open and freely accessible is a priority across Europe, the domain lacks appropriate, persistent repositories. The result is that, due to the fragility of digital data and non-repeatable nature of most archaeological research, the domain is poised to lose a generation of research to a “digital dark age.”  The key to mitigating this crisis is to bring archaeologists and data management specialists together to share expertise, and create resources that allow them to address problems in the most appropriate way within their own countries. While important international standards exist and should be used, there is no single way to build a repository. To be successful, archaeologists must be at the decision-making heart of how their data is archived to ensure re-use is possible. 

    The SEADDA Project, which is based at the University of York (UK) and made up of scholars from 26 countries, will address these challenges by establishing a priority research area in the archiving, dissemination and open access re-use of archaeological data. It will bring together an interdisciplinary network of archaeologists and computer scientists; experts in archaeological data management and open data dissemination and re-use. The project will create publications and materials that will set out the state of the art for archaeological archiving across Europe. The project will also organize meetings and training that will allow archaeologists from countries with archiving expertise to work with archaeologists with few or no available options, so they may share knowledge and create dialogue within their countries, and move forward to address the crisis.

  • Kurt Rademaker’s Work on the Peopling of the Americas Featured in the New York Times

    An international research team, including MSU Dept. of Anthropology Assistant Professor Kurt Rademaker and five team members, contributed some of the key ancient human remains that documented population dynamics in the Andean region. The results of this research were revealed in a recent article published in the journal Cell. In 2015 Rademaker’s team excavated several ancient individuals from Cuncaicha rockshelter, in the high-elevation Peruvian Andes. Rademaker hand-carried the three rare, ancient individuals which included a 9000-year-old female and two males dating from 4200 and 3300 years ago from Peru to labs in the US and Germany for radiocarbon dating, CT scanning, stable isotope and paleogenetic analyses and then returned them to Peru. This work lead to the first high quality ancient DNA data from Central and South America, shedding light on a distinctive DNA type associated with the first widespread archaeological culture of North America (Clovis). This work has also been highlighted in the New York Times this past weekend (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/science/prehistoric-migration-americas.html). Rademaker says “As an archaeologist, it is incredibly rewarding to collaborate with physical anthropologists and paleogeneticists to unravel the complex story of early Americans. Interdisciplinary efforts like this are the future of our fields.”

  • Stacey Camp Publishes New Article in Historical Archaeology

    The Department of Anthropology is pleased to announce that Dr. Stacey Camp, Associate Professor and Director of the Campus Archaeology Program, has published a new article in Historical Archaeology, the flagship journal of the Society for Historical Archaeology.  The article, “Commentary: Excavating the Intimate,” discusses theoretical foci for current and future archaeological research on incarceration and WWII internment.

    A pre-print version of the article can be found at http://www.academia.edu/37252864/Commentary_Excavating_the_Intimate

  • College of Social Science Research Associate (Post-Doc) Position

    Michigan State University (MSU) Department of Anthropology encourages anthropologists to apply for MSU College of Social Science (CSS) Ph.D. Research Associate positions. The department is particularly interested in applicants specializing in archaeology and medical sub-fields. Research Associates will participate in a CSS Dean’s Research Associate Development Institute, with the goal of possibly transitioning into tenure-system positions at Michigan State University. The Dean’s Research Associate Program was established in 2018, as a major College initiative aimed at promoting an inclusive scholarly environment in which outstanding scholars in the social sciences support the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the academy. The Dean’s Research Associates will have a minimal teaching load, will be mentored and supported, and will participate in a CSS Dean’s Research Associate Development Institute, with the goal of possibly transitioning them into tenure-system positions at Michigan State University. Michigan State University is a R1 institution and applicants with a demonstrated record of peer reviewed publication and competitive funding for research are preferred; an active research program is required. A Ph.D. is required by September 2019, and no earlier than May 2016. Women, minorities, and persons with disabilities are encouraged to apply. For more information and to apply visit http://careers.msu.edu and reference job posting #534781. Review of applications begins November 15, 2018. Questions regarding this position can be addressed to the Department of Anthropology Chair, Dr. Jodie O’Gorman, ogorman@msu.edu or Dr. Nwando Achebe, Faculty Excellence Advocate, College of Social Science (achebe@msu.edu). Michigan State University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.