Adjunct Faculty & Research Associates

Livelihoods, inclusive approaches to economic development (based on gender, ethnicity, class), political ecology, participatory methods, the Andes, Central America, rural U.S.

landscape studies, mortuary analysis, monuments, the Greater Near East (ancient and modern), settlement analysis and settlement ecology, political economy and non-state societies, resilience and persistence of non-state societies, community-based archaeology, international cultural resource management

Cultural transmission, social interaction and integration, political and economic organization, social science applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and computer modeling and simulation, archaeology of the Eastern Woodlands of North America.

Archaeology of the Andes, symmetry analysis, mortuary archaeology, ceramic analysis. I am interested in examining how art and design are used to encode cultural messages about identity, ideology, and human interaction with the environment.

Brazil, Latin America & the Caribbean, cultural production, social movements, history and anthropology, ethnomusicology, Carnival, sugarcane, slavery, engaged and collaborative research.

Ethnographic Research

Political Ecology, Environmental Governance, Social Movements, NGOs and Development, Gender, Indigeneity, Latin America (Peru), Ethnographic Methods

Prehistoric Archaeology, Historical Archaeology, Zooarchaeology, French Colonial Archaeology, Midwestern United States, Upper Great Lakes region

Bone and Dental Histology, Bioarchaeology of the Ancient Maya, Dental Anthropology, Forensic Anthropology, Strontium Isotope Analysis

Shawn’s dissertation research focuses on changes in behaviour (much of this, ritual) in subterranean sites associated with the developmental trajectory of ancient complex (Maya) polities in central Belize. His current/recent field projects include the Central Belize Archaeological Survey, Belize, C.A. and the Isla Zapatera Archaeological Project, Nicaragua, C.A. Recent publications have focused on ritual practice in the cave context, urban theory (esp. urban liturgy), and modelling pedestrian movement in ancient urban spaces., Shawn is completing work on a peer-reviewed edited volume (with Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown) focussed on interpreting archaeological signatures of Mesoamerican conflict through reference to text and image.

legal and political anthropology, West Africa, Senegal, economic anthropology, study of consumption and social change, religion and ritual

Identity formation at the intersection of gendered, ethnic, and class-based struggles among the Ch’orti’ Maya of Western Honduras; indigenous social movements in Latin America; Anthropology of Tourism; and Anthropology of Education.

Medical anthropology, Applied anthropology, Health care inequalities, Political violence, Holocaust, Narrative analysis, Intimate ethnography