Research
Research is a source of vitality that enhances the experience of our students.
Our faculty are engaged in exciting and relevant research locally, regionally and internationally, and across anthropology's sub-fields of archaeology, biological and cultural anthropology.
A distinctive feature of our research program and graduate training is our concern to create thematic integration across anthropology's traditional sub-fields. This is an innovative and exciting approach that builds on anthropology's long-standing holistic approach at a time when fracturing along sub-disciplinary lines is becoming the norm.
We're one among a small number of anthropology departments in North America that is actively fostering meaningful connections and dialogue among anthropology's traditional sub-fields.
Several thematic foci link faculty and students across traditional sub-field boundaries. These include:
Evolution and Ecology
This research theme connects the traditional subfields of archaeology and biological anthropology to address questions of how humans and non-human primates relate to their environments over both short and long-term time scales.
Space, Place, Knowledge and Power
This research theme works across anthropological and archaeological approaches to see the significance of social spaces, meaningful places and the situated nature of knowledge, through ideas of belonging, cultural landscapes, displacement, borders, land tenure, and built environments—in shaping human life.
Culture, Health and Inequality
This research theme recognizes the significance of understanding the role of social inequality and cultural interpretations in shaping human experience and addressing pressing global issues.
Visual Anthropology and Materiality
This research theme connects the work of visual and cultural anthropologists with archaeologists who are investigating human visual communication and the cultural effects of the production, circulation and consumption of images and objects.