The anthropology graduate program welcomed five new students this fall:
- Madeline Clark, prehistoric archaeology
- Mustafizurrra Rahat, cultural anthropology
- Kendall Scalf, Japanese studies
We also admitted two outstanding undergraduate anthropology majors to our accelerated master’s program: Grace Smith and Heather Salmons. These two students will complete the requirements for their undergraduate degrees in anthropology at the same time that they complete requirements for their first year of graduate school. Heather Salmons is the first student to begin the accelerated sequence in biological anthropology since the program was begun in 2017.
Over the summer, our returning students completed a variety of field school and ethnographic research projects: emo concerts in the United Kingdom (Apollo Johnson), men’s political and social groups in the U.S. (Alexander Koch), connections between nutrition and endometriosis (Rebekah Greenslaugh), and new tattoo cultures in Japan (Elise Ulrich). Charles Roelant attended a field school in Italy with interdisciplinary Illinois State faculty.
Our returning applied community and economic development (ACED) master’s students, Sierra Mack-Erb and Laura Keeran, were placed with their professional practice assignments for the 2024-25 academic year. Keeran is working with the Economic and Community Development Department in the City of Bloomington, and Mack-Erb is working with the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design (CIRD) at the Housing Assistance Council (HAC) in Washington, D.C.
Seven students graduated in the 2023-24 academic year, successfully defending their theses or presenting their ACED capstone papers:
- Michele Blatzheim, “The Epistemological Politics of ‘False Memory Syndrome’”
- Carly Collins, “Empowering Communities and the Self: Applying Trauma-Informed Care to Program Development in a National Nonprofit” in collaboration with the Community Opportunity Alliance
- Anastasia Ervin, “Building Community Support: A Multi-scalar Topographical Analysis of Sewage Infrastructure Case Studies in Central Illinois”
- Riley Francis, “From Eighty Acres and a Mule to Two Thousand Acres and Twenty-Four Row Planters: Anxieties of Growth in the Agriculture Sector from Family Farms”
- Arielle Hernandez, “Hit Unmute and Press Record: Developing a Young Adult Mental Health Podcast,” ACED capstone written in collaboration with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Illinois
- Janeth Montenegro, “Asian Americans, Latinos, and the Hana Center: Solidarity Through Community Organization in Northeastern Chicago”
- Michaela Schroeder, “Bonobo Vocalizations Reveal Causal Reasoning During Stone Tool Production”
We are looking forward to our recruitment and admissions cycle for fall 2025!
