News

"This essay offers a relational interpretation of global governance since the 1960s. I trace how interacting ideas, events, and worldviews shape global strategies for governing relationships
with the global South. Specifically, prescriptions of modernization via capitalism invariably involve a reimagination of Western civilization" (Ong, 2023) Click Here to Read the Full Essay

The Anthropology department congratulates our faculty member Sarah E. Vaughn for receiving the Julian Steward Award.

Engineering Vulnerability: In Pursuit of Climate Adaptation (Duke University Press) has won the 2022 Julian Steward Award.

The award is presented annually by the Anthropology & Environment Society of the American Anthropological Association for the best monograph in environmental and ecological anthropology.

CONGRATS PROFESSOR VAUGHN!

Department of Anthropology at UC Berkeley

Assistant Professor Aarti Sethi, along with Ciriacy-Wantrup Fellow Tanya Matthan, was featured on the Social Science Matrix podcast. In the interview, Sethi and Matthan discuss the way that the contemporary agrarian crisis in India has reshaped lives of ordinary people, and the contemporary crisis' history in the Green Revolution and colonial production processes. 

The Department of Anthropology announces the inaugural award of the Sam Dubal Fellowship in Critical Cultural and Medical Anthropology to Carolina Talavera

The Department of Anthropology wants to send a huge congratulations to Professor Sabrina C. Agarwal. Professor Agarwal has recieved recognition from the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, UC Berkeley is recognizing its outstanding Graduate Student Instructors of 2022 - GSIs are essential to ensuring our Anthropology undergrads are recieving the adequate support and teaching during their undergraduate years.

Register Here - Free 

"Afghanistan Then and Now: A Conversation with Former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani," scheduled for Thursday, March 31 at 2 p.m. ET.

The Anthropology Department wants to congratulate Sabrina Agawarl for receiving UC Berkeley's Distinguished Teaching Award. The Distinguished Teaching Award is UC Berkeley's highest honor for teaching. 

Leiden University has announced the intent to confer an honorary doctorate on Professor of Anthropology Rosemary Joyce. The degree will be awarded on February 8, 2022 at the university's Dies Natalis, the celebration of its 447th year since it was founded in 1575 as the first university in that country.

In this episode of the Matrix podcast, Julia Sizek interviews Clare Ibarra, a PhD candidate in history, and Naomi Shoenfeld, a public health nurse practitioner and recent PhD from the joint UC San Francisco/UC Berkeley medical anthropology program. Both Ibarra and Shoenfeld study the history and present of socialist science and medicine in Cuba. 

https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/science-and-socialism-in-cuba/

UC Berkeley Anthropology PhD Graduate and Rice University Assistant Professor, Dr. Victoria Massie, was featured at Social Science Matrix on their podcast "Genetic Ancestry Testing and Reconnection: An Interview with Dr.

A special issue of the journal Public Anthropology focuses on the important contributions of our own Laura Nader. The volume titled  "Ethnography, Politics, Commitment: Engaging with the Work of Laura Nader" and is available on the Public Anthropologist website:

The Berkeley Disability Lab was featured in an article by Diverse Education! Check out the article here: https://www.diverseeducation.com/demographics/disabilties/article/15114662/centering-accessibility-for-disabled-community

We are extremely honored to announce the Sam Dubal Fellowship in Critical Cultural and Medical Anthropology in memory of Sam Dubal, his legacy, and his commitment to anthropology and medicine.

"Zombie Infrastructure: A legal geography of railroad monstrosity in the California desert" was recently published by Anthro PhD Candidate Julia Sizek on Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 

You can read Julia's article of "Zombie Infrastructure" here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02637758211023504.

Big congrats, Julia!

Professor Ruth E. Tringham (Department of Anthropology) has just been recognized by the Royal Anthropological Society of Great Britain and Ireland as the recipient of the 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award. This is an annual award to recognize an anthropologist for their "fundamental, sustained and outstanding contribution to the discipline of anthropology over the course of their career".The RAI is the oldest professional societyfor anthropology, founded in 1871.

UC Berkeley Anthropology Professor, and Director of the Archaeological Research Facility, Christine Hastorf is being celebrated by the Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Research. 

We wish to celebrate May N. Diaz's 100th Birthday

On Wed, April 28th, 2021, UC Berkeley Anthropology Professor Kent Lightfoot was awarded the David A. Fredrickson Lifetime Achievement Award of the Society for California Archaeology. Professor Lightfoot has been carrying out pioneering archaeological research in California since joining the Berkeley Anthropology faculty in 1987. Dr. Lightfoot’s research has emphasized the collaboration of working with Native Americans in the greater San Francisco Bay Area to bring the past to light, and to make it relevant to today’s indigenous populations and archaeologists.

David C. Thompson (PhD 2020 Anthropology) wins the Sérgio Buarque de Holanda Prize for the Best Dissertation in the Social Sciences from the Latin American Studies Association, Brazil Section, for his doctoral dissertation "Resocialize to Conquer the Future": Incarceration and Reform in Rio de Janeiro (dissertation chair, Professor James Holston)

Society for Cultural Anthropology Author's Page:

https://culanth.org/authors/david-thompson

Vivian Osborne was an alumna of the UC Berkeley Anthropology Masters program, having received her degree in 1922. Her master thesis was on "Types and Distribution of Negro Folklore in America".

In her time at Berkeley, and beyond, Vivian accomplished so much and was an activist and leader. Additionally, Vivian was one of the founders of the Kappa chapter, of the Delta Sigma Theta, one of the major African-American sororities. This year, Kappa celebrates its 100th anniversary!

UC Berkeley Anthropology Professor Lisa Maher and her research on "Hunter-gatherer mortuary behaviors in prehistoric Jordan" were recently featured internationally by http://sciencenews.org (https://sciencenews.org/article/ancient-body-burned-burial-jordan-death-views…) and by

From Berkeley News, UC Berkeley Anthropology Professors Kent Lightfoot and Jun Sunseri, and Anthropology Students were featured in the article: "Indigenous archaeology plows forward, despite anthropology's checkered past" (linked to article).

Congratulations to Karla "Ranger" Trujillo, Anthropology Undergraduate of the class of 2022, for becoming a Ronald B. McNair Scholar! 

Read about Karla's amazing achievement here: https://enewspaper.delmartimes.net/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=59668fd7-0752-4a49-9a35-827f4b19de56

Congratulations to UC Berkeley Anthropology PhD Lyle Fearnley on new book Virulent Zones: Animal Disease and Global Health at China’s Pandemic Epicenter through Duke University Press. 

Professor Emeritus Margaret Conkey is one of five Berkeley scholars to be elected this year as fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), one of the world’s largest scientific societies. Our congratulations to Professor Conkey for this prestigious honor! She is recognized for her theoretical work on the role of art in ancient evolution and gender studies in archeology. In addition to gender representations, Professor Conkey studies early human visual culture, the prehistory of Europe, and archaeology and multimedia.

Professor White's article, in collaboration with Catherine Draycott, titled "Why the Whiteness of Archaeology Is a Problem" was featured in SAPIEN's Best of 2020! Congrats Professor! Check out his article below!

https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/archaeology-diversity/

Recent 2020 UC Berkeley Anthropology and Near Eastern Languages & Literatures (Arabic) BA graduate, Nicholas Shafer,becomes one of 44 Marshall Scholars that will begin study in the United Kingdom in Fall 2021 and will pursue study at the University of Oxford and the University of Sussex.

The anthropology department has held discussions around the unnaming of Kroeber Hall and around the university's lack of compliance with CalNAGPRA. Wanting to extend these discussions beyond the department, anthropology graduate students, in consultation with indigenous members of the campus community, drafted two resolutions that were introduced to the UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly. On November 5 the Graduate Assembly approved these resolutions and took the official position in support of unnaming Kroeber Hall based on his harmful legacy to local indigenous communities.

We want to congratulate one of Archaeology Graduate Students, Mario Alberto Castillo for being awarded the UC President's Pre-Professoriate Fellowship from The University of California's Hispanic Serving Institution Doctoral Diversity Initiative. 

This is what Mario had to say about why their Pre-Fellowship promotes diversity and inclusion in Academia. 

The Anthropology Department has created a “Virtual Front Desk” page on the website! Students and staff can find information and resources using the clickable links embedded in the virtual office. There is also the option to meet with our Student Assistants over Zoom to answer your specific questions.  We hope that this virtual office will provide clarity and support in an online space.

As chair of the UC Berkeley anthropology department, I write to express my department’s support for the initiative to un-name Kroeber Hall. The act of un-naming, as we see it, takes an important step in addressing and acknowledging a long history of violence toward Native Americans in which UC Berkeley and the anthropology department are implicated. This act gives momentum to the long-overdue work of repair for historical injury. 

Congratulations to Professor William White on receiving the Hellman Fellow Fund. 

A blurb about his Fellow award: 

From the UC Berkeley Anthropology Faculty:

Dr. Karen Lisa Greene has passed away at a hospital near her home in Kampala, Uganda, of cerebral malaria. Dr. Greene was a superb, rigorous, and passionate scholar whose impact both as a teacher and critical innovator in child rights has been international.  She leaves her daughter Whitney and close friends and family worldwide.  

Dr. Greene did her MA in folklore and PhD in medical anthropology at Berkeley.  She was learned, with additional training in education, in critical theory, in Khmer language, and in the governance of refugees and rights. 

Professor Sarah Vaughn was a guest speaker for a Berkeley Conversations: COVID-19 video titled "Understanding and seeking equity amid COVID-19". Professor Vaughn brings ethnography to this conversation, raising awareness to how communities in the Caribbean "approach disaster preparedness and climate adaptation". 

Check it out!

https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/04/21/understanding-and-seeking-equity-amid-covid-19/

The 2020 Urban Ethnobiology Fellowship winner is Natasha Fernandez-Perez!

"Since the 1990s, increasing numbers of Coptic Orthodox Christians have immigrated to the United States particularly through the Diversity Visa, or Green Card Lottery.

Due to her outstanding contributions to archaeology, Professor Hastorf was selected as the 2020 recipient of SAA's Book Award – Scholarly for The Social Archaeology of Food Thinking about Eating from Prehistory to the Present.  Professor Hastorf will recieve the award Friday, April 24, 2020 at the Annual Business Meeting and Awards Ceremony in the Austin Convention Center. Congrats Professor Hastorf!

Featured on UC Berkeley's site, Professor Rosemary Joyce speaks on her resignation from the Cultural Property Advisory Committee and advises to take action "when the U.S. threatens to abadnon the international consensus on protection of cultural sites...". Thank you to Professor Joyce on her wise words and her service. 

https://blogs.berkeley.edu/2020/01/06/when-the-us-abandons-protection-of-cultural-sites-we-must-act/

Dylan Fagan, Social Cultural Anthropology PhD student, was awarded the Fulbright Hays DDRA fellowship for his research in Indonesia! Congrats to Dylan!

Our new episode features a conversation with the renowned anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Across their illustrious career, Nancy has researched social suffering and structural violence in a variety of contexts, including Ireland, Brazil, South Africa and, internationally, through the global trade in kidneys and other organs. Most recently, she has written about the scandal of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

(Post)Socialism as a Global Resource Interdisciplinary Conference will be held May 1–2, 2020 at UC Berkeley. 

Three new translations of Professor Alexei Yurchak's book "Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation" in Japan, Korea, and the Czech Republic.

From Princeton University Press - Blurb of "Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation" :

Featured on the BerkeleyNews, senior double major (in social welfare and anthropology) Ratu Orisi Lalabalavu talks about how he found his community and voice at UC Berkeley, as well as challenges he overcame before and during attending university. 

Article attached here: https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/11/05/daca-ratu-orisi-lalabalavu/

Attached is the link to view future and past Fall 2019 290 lectures. Dates, location, speakers, titles of the talk, and abstracts are viewable on this document.

Link here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HY10MJkUKGqccnQ8BJ0nIxvWDwSvedO_1sjQ_djdh3o/edit?usp=sharing

Please check out Candace Lukasik's recent interview on her dissertation with the Coptic Canadian History Project. Candace Lukasik is a PhD student in our department, specializing in migration, religion, and politics with a focus on American geopolitical interest in Middle Eastern Christians. 

Link here: https://thecchp.com/2019/10/27/interview-with-candace-lukasik-transnational-anxieties/

https://baynature.org/2019/09/17/in-memoriam-environmental-scientist-and-bay-nature-contributor-lester-rowntree/

Assistant Professor - Indigenous Archaeology – Department of Anthropology

The Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley seeks applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position, in the area of indigenous archaeology, with an expected start date of July 1, 2020.

Join the Anthropology Department and the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology for a lecture from Professor Christine Hastorf on the history of beer through an archaeological lens!

The Archaeology of Beer

Date & Time: August 22, 2019, 6-7:30 pm

Location: Hearst Museum of Anthropology

Sponsor: Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology

Dr. Seth Holmes, Professor of Medical Anthropology, was awarded the William T. Grant Mentoring Award, which will support his mentoring of Fabian Fernandez and Carlos Martinez, both PhD students in the Joint Medical Anthropology Program. The William T. Grant Mentoring Award aims to strengthen the mentoring of junior researchers of color and to position them for professional success. The award also seeks to support scholars in developing a stronger understanding of the career development issues facing junior colleagues of color. 

Brittany Birberick, PhD student, has won the 2019 Bennetta Jules-Rosette Graduate Essay Award from the Association of Africanist Anthropology (AfAA).  Brittany will be awarded in a ceremony at the AAA meetings in Vancouver, in November 2019. Congratulations, Brittany!

Professor Laura Nader was awarded The Law and Society Association Legacy Award. This award honors those who have made significant contributions to develop the Association, requiring both intellectual vision and commitment. This award also honors Professor Nader life's work in the field of socio-legal studies, shaping the field to what it is today. Congratulations, Professor Nader!

The Department of Anthropology announces an open Indigenous Archaeology faculty position for Fall 2020. More details on qualifications and how to apply will follow shortly. Thank you!

The American Anthropological Association awarded Dr. Charles Briggs and Dr. Clara Mantini-Briggs the Robert B. Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in
Anticipatory Anthropology. This award is given annually to reward an American Anthropological Association member’s excellent contributions to the use of anthropological perspectives, theories, models, and methods in an anticipatory mode.

We are thrilled to announce that Dr. Daena Funahashi will be joining our department in July 2019. Dr. Funahashi specializes in Medical Anthropology, Continental Philosophy, sacrifice, and addiction in both Finland and Thailand. She received her Ph.D in Anthropology from Cornell University and was formerly an Assistant Professor in Anthropology at Aarhus University. Welcome to Berkeley, Dr. Funahashi!

Four new research associates have been hired in the College of Social Science (CSS). The CSS Dean’s Research Associate Program at Michigan State University was established in 2018 as a major college initiative aimed at promoting an inclusive scholarly environment.

Congratulations to the new board members of the Anthropology Undergraduate Association for Fall 2018!

Co-Presidents: Anna Schiff + Nicholas Shafer

Secretary: Frederik Boumeester

Publicist: Ryann Hirt

Historian: Ashley Holt

Treasurer: Rosie Macon

Learn more about AUA here. 

Seth Holmes will receive the Honorable Mention Premio Iberoamericano Book Award from the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) this summer (2018). He is receiving this honorable mention for the Spanish version of his book, Fruta Fresca, Cuerpos Marchitos: Trabajadores agricolas migrantes en Estados Unidos. 

Professors Charles L. Briggs and Clara Mantini-Briggs have won the 2017 New Millennium Award, the Society for Medical Anthropology's major book prize, for the book they jointly authored, Tell Me Why My Children Died: Rabies, Indigenous Knowledge, and Communicative Justice.

UC Berkeley Senior Reflection: Chioma A.

Graduating senior and Los Angeles native Chioma talks about her time at Berkeley, her favorite professors and offers advice to new students.

The RTE Irish public TV series "What in the World"  featured a documentary on December 23, 2013 looking at the global  business of illegally brokered and trafficked organs for transplants between the USA and Isreal. Professor Nancy Scheper-Hughes is interviewed about the first person, Izak Rosenbaum, to be convicted of human organ trafficking in the US. [This video clip will only remain accessible until January 12, 2014]

Click here to view the documentary.

Proceedings of the May 2013 workshop are now available.

The Department of Anthropology at U. C. Berkeley was founded on September 10, 1901.

To learn about Study Abroad Programs at Berkeley see:
http://studyabroad.berkeley.edu/

To find a Program that fits your interest see:
http://studyabroad.berkeley.edu/Programs/