graduate students
Henry Bacha
Anthropology
Historical anthropology; historical archaeology; ethnohistory; legal anthropology; Marxism; political economy; historiography and historical methods; social movements; colonialism; anthropology of religion and ritual; the Catholic Church; Christian theology; missions and mission Christianity; Latin America; the Andes; Amazonia; the Southern Cone; Iberia; the French Americas.
website
Caglayan Bal
MES
Caglayan is a PhD student in Near Eastern Art and Archaeology whose research interests focus on understanding long-term human-environment interactions. In particular, she is interested in the impact of rapid climate changes on ancient societies and different human responses, and in the development of water management and sustainable irrigation practices. She holds a BSc in Environmental Engineering from Middle East Technical University (METU, Turkey), a BA in Protohistory and Near Eastern Archaeology from Ankara University (Turkey) and an MSc in Settlement Archaeology from METU (Turkey).
Hillary Barker
Art History
Research focuses on the intersection of the ancient and the Renaissance in Rome. Her interests include Roman Imperial religious art, antiquarianism in Renaissance Rome, collecting history and print culture.
Anna Berlekamp
MES
Near Eastern art and archaeology, with research interests in the Southern Caucasus and its connections with the Near East. Anna received her BS with Honors in Anthropological Sciences and German from Ohio State University, and she has done archaeological fieldwork in Oman, Germany, and Italy. She also conducts archaeobotanical and anthracological analysis, and her undergraduate thesis was based on the study of macrobotanical materials from a Medieval Armenian caravanserai.
Claire Bowman
Anthropology
Archaeology of the contemporary, urban abandonment and reuse; Detroit. "Race, Historicity and the Built Environment in Detroit."
website
Anthropology
Southern Europe, Mediterranean; Historical ecology, political ecology, domestication, agriculture, arboriculture, archaeobotany, rural communities, posthumanism.
Cultivation Regimes: Political Ecologies of Domestication at Nadin-Gradina, Croatia, ca 500 BCE - 1700 CE.
Alice Diaz Chauvigné
Anthropology
South America; zooarchaeology, Tairona polity, human-animal interactions, transitions and transformation between the pre-Columbian and colonial periods.
Luiza Osorio G. da Silva
MES
Near East - Egypt; kingship, its legitimacy, and diverse legitimization strategies in different periods; the materiality of mudbricks in ancient Egypt and on the significance of their use in the construction of royal palaces.
Anthropology
Western Europe - Mediterranean prehistory; material culture, ritual uses of the human body, embodiment, consumption and identity, political economy, food and cuisine, alcohol and feasting, colonialism, isotope analysis, landscape archaeology.
Severing Heads and Social Ties: A Biogeochemistry and Material Culture Approach to Contested Bodies in the Late Iron Age of Southern France
MES
Suay is a PhD student whose primary research interests include prehistoric communities of Anatolia, early social complexity, household archaeology, and microarchaeology. After working in several archaeological excavation projects in western Anatolia, she completed her master thesis on Neolithic households of the region. More recently, she is interested in exploring the organization of craft production in early complex societies.
Anthropology
West Africa - Mali. Hidden inequalities of heterarchical societies in Iron Age West Africa, bioarchaeological analysis.
Anthropology
East African Rock Art. African Great Lakes Region: Lake Victoria & Tanzanian Southern Highlands. Community archaeology; ethnography and oral history as evidence for interpreting rock art; contemporary ritual practices at rock art sites; community-based collaborative rock art interpretation; community-based rock art heritage management; rock art archiving practices.
Anthropology
Sub-Arctic/Arctic, landscapes/seascapes/icescapes, Inuit sovereignty, environmental anthropology, archaeology of the contemporary, settler colonialism, missionization, Cold War, collaborative and public archaeology, ethnographic/experimental film.
Anthropology
Indian Ocean; archaeology; islands – Mauritius, Madagascar, Comoros, Réunion; material religion; Islam; commerce; osteology and mortuary practices; historiography; colonialism – French and British; indenture and enslavement; Silk Road; the Qur’ān; literature and literary theory; linguistics; East Africa; Oman; South Asia; Egyptology and hieroglyphs; archaeology of knowledge; Classical Arabic; ships; lascars and pirates; Palmyra; Palestine.
Anthropology
Mid-Atlantic USA, urban archaeology, immigration and migration, archaeology of the African Diaspora, nationalism constructions of heritage, public archaeology
website
Anthropology
China, Cultural frontier regions (the Gansu/Hexi Corridor); a study of temporality from the perspective of subsistence practices - utilizing zooarchaeology & paleosoil records
Anthropology
Louisiana, French Caribbean, Haiti; Labor and subjectification, urban landscapes, built environment; material culture; craftsmanship, urban experience; loss, displacement, belonging.
Crafting Community: Race, Creative Labor, and Everyday Aesthetics in the Creole Faubourgs of New Orleans, 1790-1896.
Anthropology
European Celtic societies of the early Middle Ages, especially focusing on the Picts and their interaction with Goidelic-speaking groups. Materiality, material culture theory, semiotics, archaeology of ethnicity
MES
Archaeology of the Neolithic Near East, Emergence of Sedentism and Agriculture, Ideology and Cultural Systems, Interpellation and Dialectical Materialism
Anthropology
Africa - Egypt/Nubia, Gebel Barkal, Sudan. State Power: ideology, religion and material culture; Archaeology of Ideology: iconography, landscape and ritual. "In the Houses of the Ram and the Lion: Religious Displays of Political Subjectivity in the Kushite Temples of Amun and Apedemak."
website
Anthropology
East Asia, Japan; Material aspects of Western interaction with early modern Japan (the Dutch at Dejima); Commodities and materiality, cultural property management and tourism; value and commensuration, feasting, early modern globalization and commerce, sociality of economic transactions, alterity.
Dejima: An Archaeology of Intercultural Commerce in Early Modern Japan.
MES
Near East; archaeology of Syro-Palestine in the Bronze and Iron Ages, socio-economic interaction and ritual identity in the region, ceramic analysis, and GIS.
Anthropology
East Asia - China (Anyang, Late Shang); Bronze Age China, bioarchaeology; childhood; personhood and gender; sacrifice; stable isotope analysis; skeletal pathology and trauma; mortuary practice.
Revisiting Lineage: A Bioarchaeological Life Course Approach to Relatedness in the Late Shang Capital of Yinxu (c. 1200-1050 BCE).
EALC & Anthropology
East Asia - China; Shang China, Erligang, agriculture.
website
Anthropology
Cloth and clothing; textile production; materiality and affect; human/non-human interactions; objects of personal adornment; mortuary archaeology; heritage and museums. East Asia – China, Japan, and Central Europe.
Anthropology
Archaeology. Production of scientific knowledge and digital technology: digital applications in archaeology, fieldwork recording, systems of documentation - Ontology Gap and Living Archive(s).
Anthropology
Historical/industrial archaeology, historical anthropology, labor history, racial capitalism, extraction, materiality, critical geography, US South.
MES
Harrison is a PhD student in the Near Eastern Art and Archaeology track focusing on the archaeology of Central Asia. In particular, he is interested in the archaeological landscape of Central Asia during the Kushan period. His research focuses on exploring questions related to historical geography, settlement patterning, mobility, the conceptualization of landscapes, and interregional interaction all examined through methods and mindsets rooted in landscape archaeology, comparative archaeology, and geospatial analysis.
MES
Islamic Archaeology. Veronica is a maritime archaeologist who studies harbors, exchange networks, and maritime cultural landscapes in the eastern Mediterranean. She is interested in early Islamic trade, coastal communities, and the rise of the Muslim navy. Veronica received her MA from the Nautical Archaeology Program at Texas A&M, as well as a certificate in the Conservation of Archaeological Resources. She is a research associate at the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, where she has most recently co-directed the partial excavation and recording of a 3rd Dynasty boat burial at Abusir. Veronica has worked on archaeological projects around the globe, including terrestrial sites in Egypt, Vietnam, and Hawaii, underwater excavations in Alexandria, Greece, Bermuda, and Tobago, and deepwater surveys off Crete and Israel. After three years as a CRM project supervisor in Hawaii, Veronica co-founded a photogrammetry company that creates interactive 3D exhibits for at-risk and inaccessible archaeological sites.
Anthropology
Latin America - Argentina. Contemporary ethnoarchaeolgy, mortuary monuments, material sources and oral/textual counterparts, practices of resistance. Assemblages of memories curated by loved ones of those who were disappeared during Argentina's "Dirty War."
Art History
Studies pre-Columbian and Colonial Latin American art history. Her research explores the multivalence of colonial aesthetics and the ways in which the pre-Columbian tradition was condensed and transformed in colonial art.
Anthropology
West Africa, Mexico, Central America. Postcolonial archaeology, community-based research, activist research methods.
website
MES
Missionization, Colonialism, Gender & Religion, West Africa, North America, French Empire, Human-Plant Relationships, Archives, Archaeology.
website
Anthropology
Egyptian Archaeology, with a specialty in zooarchaeology. Sasha's research interests include domestication and animal husbandry in the ancient Near East, state provisioning and household economies, and the link between production strategies and the political economy. Her dissertation work focuses on the use of faunal remains from Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period contexts at Edfu and Dendera to understand if and how production strategies changed after the collapse of the centralized government, and if these changes impacted the economic structure at these settlement sites. Sasha has been a teaching assistant for undergraduate courses in New Kingdom Archaeology and Bioarchaeology at the University of Chicago, and will teach a course on Forensic Archaeology in Winter 2018. She has also been actively involved in museum education at the Oriental Institute where she has given lectures and designed and implemented student and family programs.
Anthropology
Atlantic Trade; slave trade; senegal; senegambia; underwater archaeology; maritime archaeology; ports; harbors; ships.
MES
Egyptian Archaeology. Émilie's interests include settlement archaeology, the interactions between ancient Egypt and Nubia, and the political uses and misuses of archaeology. She is also interested in the role of museums in transmitting and shaping our modern perceptions of the past. She obtained a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Classics with honors from McGill University, and has participated in various archaeological excavations in Canada and in France. Since 2015, she has been a member of the Oriental Institute missions excavating at Tell Edfu and Dendera. She has also been working with the Center for Ancient Middle Eastern Landscapes of the Oriental Institute since 2013, on diverse projects utilizing GIS for archaeological and heritage purposes. She was co-coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Archaeology Workshop in 2015-2016, and is currently working with the Oriental Institute Museum to design the display maps for the renewal of the galleries.
Anthropology
Archaeology, Historical Anthropology, Eastern North America, Great Lakes, Landscape Studies, Indigenous Archaeologies, Archaeologies of Colonialism, Historiography, Archives and Archival Power
MES
Near Eastern art and archaeology, with research interests in the Bronze Age and Iron Age of the Southern Levant. Her research focuses on the influences of empires like Egypt and Assyria on this region’s culture and development. She received her undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University and her masters degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Additionally, she has worked at several archaeological sites in Israel including Ashkelon, Tel Shimron, Megiddo, Qumran Caves, and the City of David.
MES
Private Houses and Palace Administration: Household Economies and Sociopolitical Development in late 3rd Millennium BC Tell Asmar, Mesopotamia.
Anthropology
Britain: Middle Ages/Early Modern. Circulation of affect through material form (especially architecture/small churces in the English countryside) repetition and replication of interaction and experience, aesthetics, sensory experience of space/spatial layout.
Anthropology
Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa; Greek colonies on the Black Sea; maritime connectivity, trade networks, ancient economies. Blend of classical archaeology and maritime studies, nautical archaeology, ancient colonial activity.
MES
Near East; Bronze and Iron Age archaeology of the southern Levant, ancient daily life, economy, household archaeology, and city planning.
Anthropology
Sonoran borderlands, historical archaeology, settler colonialism & extractive industries, waste and toxicity, ecologial futures, landscape, GIS
MES
Near Eastern Art and Archaeology. She is interested in interregional interactions throughout Mesopotamia and Central Asia. She got her BA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she majored in German and anthropology, with a minor in archaeology. After getting an MA through the Center of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago, she entered the PhD program in NELC. She attended field school in Belize at Buena Vista and has had subsequent excavation experience in Turkey. She has been on archaeological surveys in Azerbaijan and in Armenia. Since entering beginning her PhD, she has received Kosciuszko Foundation Tuition Scholarship, the Phi Kappa Phi Love of Learning Award, and a FLAS fellowship for studying Turkish.
Art History
Studies history of art and architecture on the Silk Road, with a focus on the arts and culture of the Xianbei (proto-Mongols) and the Sogdians (an Eastern Iranian people). His dissertation discusses sarcophagi of the Northern Dynasties (386-581 CE), a politically divisive but culturally brilliant period in Chinese history.
website
EALC
Her research focuses on the archaeology of Bronze Age China, dealing mainly with excavated materials and bronze and bone inscriptions. She is interested in using digital humanities tools to investigate regional and local interactions. Her B.A. thesis, “Reexamine Bronze Foundries in Anyang: A Study of the Bronze Production Organization in Late Shang China,” utilizes GIS and geospatial analysis to explore the limit of the current designation of “industrial zones” in Anyang.
