Ami Tamakloe

Yayra Tamakloe (Preferred name Ami Tamakloe) is interested in researching the Anlo-Ewe ethnic group in Western Africa through  festivals to elicit the roles of women within this ethnic group. Ami holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Kent State University's Fashion Design and is a Ronald McNair Fellow. She is originally from Ghana and is interested in the intersection between research and mixed media storytelling.

Nia Whitmal

Nia is a PhD student in sociocultural anthropology from Amherst, Massachusetts. She studies the Black middle class and Black home ownership in Harlem, New York City. In particular, she is interested in Black Harlemites who own and/or will inherit historic brownstones and limited equity co-ops. Her work scrutinizes discourses around gentrification, racial authenticity and sincerity, and the limits of ownership.She works at the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem in film programming and archives.

Iman Ali

Iman is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology. Her research interests include militarism, international relations, governance and infrastructure. In particular, she is interested in learning about the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL. Her research focuses on UNIFIL’s relationship with local communities in south Lebanon.Iman’s research is funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships Program (NSF-GRFP) as well as the Wenner-Gren Foundation. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Prior to beginning her Ph.D., she worked as a research associate at Michigan Medicine.

Maik Wiesen

Maik joined the department as a PhD student having earned his BA in Sociology from Heidelberg University and his MSc in Medical Anthropology from the University of Oxford. He also worked as a tutor and research assistant at the Max-Weber-Institute in Heidelberg where he supervised undergraduate students. As an advocate of interdisciplinary discourse and research, Maik is acquainted with both quantitative and qualitative approaches to social scientific inquiry.
His research broadly concerns…

Rafael Cruz Gil

Rafael was born in Mexico City, where he completed his B.A. in Archaeology at the National School of Anthropology and History. He later earned his M.A. in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago.He has participated in projects in Mexico, Palestine, and the US. Rafael is a Ph.D. student in Anthropology who focuses on Mesoamerica and imperial practices and social inequality in Teotihuacan. His interests include colonialism, imperialism, the rise of state societies, LiDAR mapping, and the uses of spatial analysis and urban studies in archaeology.

Alex Symons

Alex is a PhD student in Archaeological Anthropology. He holds a BA in Archaeology from the University of Reading and MSc in Archaeological Science from the University of Oxford. His research focusses on human-animal-environment relations in the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age in the South Caucasus. Specifically, he investigates the ways in which domestic animals and humans collaborate to produce and resist unequal power relations in the context of the emerging State. His methods include traditional zooarchaeology approaches and isotopic analysis of animal bones and teeth. He is also a current executive board member of the Archaeological Science Group at Cornell.

Parijat Jha

Parijat is a PhD student in socio-cultural anthropology. He is interested in the social, environmental, and political-economic conditions surrounding labor migration in South Asia. He especially focuses on the realms of agriculture, produce markets, and apple cultivation. He obtained an MA in South Asian studies from the University of Washington and a BA in Political Science from The Ohio State University.

Nadav Wall

Nadav is a PhD student in socio-cultural anthropology. His research explores the pink market or queer economy in Mexico City amidst protracted state austerity. Nadav completed his undergraduate degree at Binghamton University and holds an MSc in anthropology and development from the London School of Economics.

Key words:  affects, austerity, infrastructure, kinship, latin america, media, money, queerness, urbanism, value, visual anthropology

Emily Hayflick

Emily Hayflick’s research centers on the entanglements of American legal frameworks, conservation programs/wildlife management, and communities’ relations with land and animals. Specifically, she is interested in how these entanglements emerge in the context of Indigenous tribes and nations' relations with the U.S government. Her MA work concentrated on the language of the Alaska Native arts and crafts exemption within the Marine Mammal Protection Act, examining the law in relation to the…

Liting Ding

Ding is a Ph.D. student in socio-cultural anthropology. Her research explores agrarian livelihood transitions and late-socialism in the Mekong Delta. She works with shrimp farming households and researchers to tell a story of lives entangled with economic promises, expertise in rural development, and climate change. Ding holds a BA and an MA in Chinese literature/classics from the Renmin University of China. She lived in Chicago and worked on reproductive and sexual health issues before…

Lucinda E.G. Ramberg

I am a medical and sociocultural anthropologist and interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of several fields including feminist, postcolonial and queer theories; religion and secularism; medicine and the body; and South Asia. My research projects in South India and the United States have roots in longstanding engagements with the politics of sexuality, gender and religion. These projects have focused in particular on the body as an artifact of culture and power in relation to questions of sexual subjectivity, social transformation and citizenship projects. I have conducted research in the US on sexual ‘risk’ and transsexual medicine and in South India on ‘sacred prostitution’ (devadasi dedication) and Dalit conversion to Buddhism.

Rogelio Scott

Chencong Zhu

Chencong Zhu is a PhD student in sociocultural anthropology. He is interested in the intersections of political ecology, urban development, and maritime geopolitics, with a particular focus on endangered species conservation in the postwar Taiwan Strait. Born and raised in Xiamen (Fujian, China), he received a BA in sociology from Renmin University of China. 

Anna Whittemore

I am an anthropologicalbioarchaeologist interested in the intersection of migration and power. In particular, I study the ways in which political structure informs migration and mobility patterns, and the consequences of migration on the embodied experiences of past individuals.In my dissertation project, I will study patterns of health, injury, diet, and mobility among Inka-era (ca. 1400-1550) individuals buried at probable imperial labor colonies in the district of Huancasancos (Department of Ayacucho) in the south-central Peruvian Andes using bioarchaeological and isotopic methods. This will allow me to explorehow the life experiences and vulnerabilities of individuals and communities transplanted by the empire differed from those who remained in their homelands. Ultimately, my goal is to broaden anthropological understanding of the biocultural consequences of coerced and forced migrations under imperial regimes.

Xinlei Sha

Alexander Matika

Jaimie Luria

Jaimie comes to Cornell with a B.A. in Art History and Museum Anthropology from Sarah Lawrence College, an M.A. in Decorative Arts, Design History and Material Culture from Bard College, and a graduate certificate in Heritage Conservation from the University of Arizona's College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture. Jaimie’s research interests include historic landscape preservation, sacred material culture, cultural memory and identity in diaspora, and ritual practices related…

Yu Liang

Liang Yu,also known as Leeve Palrai,is a PhD candidate in anthropology at Cornell. As an indigenous anthropologist hailing from‘oponoho community (Rukai) in Southern Taiwan, Liang Yu’s research interestsare drivenby aset ofempirical questions:What doesthe term “indigenous people” signify across different geographical locations,political contexts, and historical nuances? How does the identification andcategorization of “indigenous people” hold more significance than otherpolitical and cultural identities?

Itamar Haritan

Itamar Haritan is an Anthropology PhD Candidate at Cornell University. He received his BA in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, and his MA in Anthropology and Sociology from Tel Aviv University. He is interested in Ashkenazi Jewish identity in Israel/Palestine, specifically the ways that the “negation of the diaspora” is enacted and challenged in contemporary practices of remembrance, forgetting and self-making.

Karina Beras

Karina is a doctoral student in the department of Anthropology. Her interests are centered around migration, kinship, and identity; specifically, how the construction of kinship and its role in identity formation are based on cultural contexts and can be informed by the state. She wants to explore how varied forms and definitions of kinship for immigrant and displaced communities create new narratives of family, belonging, and identity, and ultimately relate to memory, preservation, and…

Amy Somchanhmavong

Amanda Williams

Amanda is pursuing her Master’s degree in anthropology after completing her B.A. in China and Asia Pacific Studies at Cornell. Since graduating, Amanda has been working as an Admissions Counselor for the SC Johnson College of Business where her interest in higher education, opportunity and access has grown. With a passion for the liberal arts and sociocultural development she is excited to study education through the lens of anthropology.
 

Rachel E. Prentice

Professor Rachel Prentice is an anthropologist of medicine, technology, and the body. Her interests focus on opening up the assumptions and contradictions contained in 21st century North American biomedicine. Her recently completed project is an ethnographic examination of anatomy and surgery teaching and the rise of simulators and other technologies for teaching and practice. Professor Prentice documents how physicians in training come to embody biomedical techniques, perceptions, judgments, and ethics, learning deeply held medical values while learning to practice medicine.

Xavier Robillard-Martel

Xavier Robillard-Martel joined the PhD program in Anthropology after receiving his MSc and BSc in Anthropology from the Université de Montréal. His doctoral research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC).

Connor Rechtzigel