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1/12/2025 Gardens don't just grow vegetables, they can also grow mutual aid! Andrew Flachs published a research article in East European Politics and Societies that assesses the role of home gardens and food self provisioning as a vehicle for mutual aid in Bosnia. The paper, ““We Are Just Surviving”: The Paradox of Robust Homegardens in Northern Bosnia and Herzegovina” uses a combination of garden surveys, interviews, and participant observation to show how this agricultural work reflects deep ambiguities about rural futures in a mountainous region with high biodiversity, uncertain formal economies, and a desire to maintain a sense of home despite outmigration
12/22/2025 Dr. Dada Docot's essay "Anthropology of the Hometown" is now live in the American Anthropologist. Docot argues that doing anthropology of the hometown contributes to broader efforts of disciplinary redress and decolonization. Read open access at https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.70047
12/9/2025 Dr. Risa Cromer has been awarded the 2026 Adele Clarke Book Award for her 2023 book “Conceiving Christian America. Embryo Adoption and Reproductive Politics” published by NYU Press. The Adele Clarke Book Award is an interdisciplinary award "for an outstanding book from SHS-STS (Social and Human Sciences/Science and Technology Studies) on reproductive processes, experiences, technologies, politics, and/or practice”. It is "presented every other fall to honor a groundbreaking work judged to be the most potentially influential contribution to scholarship on reproduction”.
12/1/2025 Dr. Courtney Wittekind's paper, "Build the New City as Fast as Possible: Speculation as Subsistence in Peri-Urban Myanmar,” was named an honorable mention for the 2025 Bonnie McCay Prize.
11/12/2025 Dr. Dada Docot is co-editor (with Ksenia Golovina) of the November issue of The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology. The special issue is dedicated to the lifework of anthropologist of tourism & migration Dr. Shinji Yamashita. View issue at https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rtap20/26/4#
11/12/2025 Prof. Ian Lindsay and two of his graduate students, Ovie Agezeh and Max Gosch, presented at the annual Purdue GIS Day conference on November 7. Max’s poster, “The Impact of Fluvial Erosion on Archaeological Sites in Kansas,” was awarded top prize in the Graduate Student Digital Humanities category.
11/3/2025 A team of Purdue professors including Sherylyn Briller (College of Liberal Arts), Jung Joo Sohn (College of Liberal Arts), Greg Strimel (PI, Purdue Polytechnic), Todd Kelley (Purdue Polytechnic), and Douglas Pruim (Daniels School of Business), has been awarded a $1,992,868 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to scale up an innovative approach to undergraduate education that prepares students to solve complex, real-world problems. This four-year project, funded through the NSF's Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) program, will focus on expanding "convergence education."
10/16/2025 Dr. Kory Cooper and graduate students Cassie Apuzzo and Ben Grubbs, along with Purdue EAPS Professor Ali Bramson, were featured in the Society of Historical Archaeology’s Fall Newsletter on their findings during the joint University of Southern Indiana and Purdue University Field School at Fort Ouiatenon this past summer. Check out the newsletter here
10/6/2025 Dr. Amanda Veile coauthored a paper by Advances in Nutrition "Ingestive Behavior and Precision Nutrition: Part of the Puzzle". The paper maps how age, sex, BMI, ethnicity, culture, genetics, the gut-brain axis and the microbiome influence what and how we eat, and why this matters for truly tailored nutrition guidence.
9/30/2025 Graduate student, Patricia Mathu, won 1st place in the Ecological Sciences and Engineering Symposium Creative Works Competition for Playing in the Dirt is a book I co-published last fall. It gathers writing, art, and lived experiences from dozens of queer midwestern farmers. Since its release, we've brought it to bookstores across the country, raised thousands of dollars to support BIPOC and disabled growers, and distributed nearly 100 free copies throughout the midwest.
9/18/2025 Dr. Erik Otárola-Castillo is featured in The SAA Archaeological Record for his service leading the Society for American Archaeology’s Deborah L. Nichols Meeting Access Grants committee, expanding financial support for members and lowering barriers to conference participation. Complete volunteer profile: https://mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=852385&p=6&view=issueViewer
9/16/2025 Dr. Andrew Flachs published "Ethnobiology and Degrowth," a review essay exploring how humans tend small and bountiful ecosystems.
8/29/2025 Dr. Risa Cromer was selected by The Public Religion Research Institute as an incoming member of the Reproductive Health and Rights pod for the next academic year.
8/21/2025 Dr. Michele R. Buzon, along with collegues, published Growing Old at Tombos: A View of Older Adults in an Ancient Egyptian-Nubian Community in American Journal of Biological Anthropology Volume 187, Issue 4.
8/20/2025 Dr. Melanie Beasley, along with collegues, published Late Holocene Paleodietary Patterns Among the Ancestral Ohlone: Ecogeographic Partitioning of Resources Along the San Francisco Bay Eastern Shore in American Journal of Biological Anthropology Volume 187, Issue 4.
8/13/2025 Drs. Ian Lindsay, Kali Rubaii, and collegues, published Bone uranium and lead concentrations in adults from Fallujah, Iraq in Environmental Pollution Volume 384, 1 November 2025, 126963.
7/25/2025 Dr. Melanie Beasley published Neanderthals, hypercarnivores, and maggots: Insights from stable nitrogen isotopes in Science Advances Volume 11, NO. 30.
7/9/2025 Dr. Kali Rubaii essay "Snapshots of Losing Jenna" was published in Sapiens.
7/5/2025 Dr. Melanie Beasley was interviewed as a forensic anthropology expert by KCRA 3 in Sacramento California about the recovery and identification process after a fireworks factory explosion left 7 victims missing in Esparto. Dr. Beasley assisted Chico State's Anthropology faculty with the recovery of the victims of the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, CA that took 86 lives. As faculty at Chico State involved in the recovery of the 7 missing people were working the case, Dr. Beasley assisted with the science communication effort to educate the public on what could be expected in terms of recovery of the victims after the explosion and associated fire. https://www.kcra.com/article/esparto-california-fireworks-warehouse-explosion/65299280
7/2/2025 Dr. Andrew Flachs, José Becerra, Fionna Fahey, and Patricia Mathu were mentioned on Outlook’s website: Outlook on Agriculture - Volume 54, Number 2 in their Skilling special issue: where do skills reside in agriculture?
6/27/2025 Dr. Sarah Renkert's Anthropology Class Asks What Community Would Look Like Without Food Finders. Here is a Facebook link to their project https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1B4dsrgafz/.
6/18/2025 "Since 2015, Dr. Stacy Lindshield of Purdue University and Dr. Papa Ibnou Ndiaye of Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar have led a long-term research initiative that has produced groundbreaking data on chimpanzees and their coexisting species in the park. Their work, which began in the park’s peripheral regions in 2013, has reshaped global understanding of the Niokolo-Koba ecosystem—and has directly contributed to a historic conservation victory." Here is a feature on the Research page for the College of Liberal Arts- A Decade of Discovery: Scientific Research on West African Chimpanzees Revives a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
6/16/2025 PhD candidate, Jenail Marshall, published "Matrilineal Legacies in Ancient Sudan: Uncovering the Power of Mothers in Ancient Nubia" in Adventuress Archaeology magazine, April 2025.
6/7/2025 Dr. Erik Otárola-Castillo was recently featured in TIME Magazine! In his essay, he discusses whether AI will replace education or if we’ll remain knowledgeable enough to guide it. He argues that while AI can enhance learning, it still needs human oversight, scientific grounding, and the kind of deep understanding that only human ingenuity, not statistical algorithms, can generate. AI Can’t Replace Education—Unless We Let It
6/7/2025 Dr. Courtney Wittekind attended a workshop organised by The Institute of Asian Studies (IAS) and Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD). International researchers gather for ‘Urban Transformations in Southeast Asia’ workshop
6/5/2025 Dr. Dada Docot published "An Archive of Archives Lost" in Photographies. In her affective autoethnographic visual essay, Docot examines the devastating impact of climate change through the lens of personal loss.
6/5/2025 Dr. Risa Cromer's book Conceiving Christian America: Embryo Adoption and Reproductive Politics was covered in a long form essay in The Guardian- IVF is life-changing for infertile families. But the Christian right says it’s not in ‘God’s plan’ .
5/29/2025 Dr. Dada Docot published "An Inheritance Saga: Migration, Kinship, and Postcolonial Bureaucracy in the Llorente vs. Llorente Case of Nabua, Philippines" in Humans. In this piece on anthropology of law, Docot shows how the landmark Philippine Supreme Court case Llorente vs. Llorente illuminates the complex intersections of transnational migration, inheritance law, and colonial legacies.
5/21/2025 We are pleased to announce that Narges Khatoon Shoaibi Nobarian, graduate student in Anthropology, has published an article in the prestigious journal Pharmaceutical Research, in collaboration with an international team of health researchers. The paper, "Reinforcing gut integrity: A systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials assessing probiotics, synbiotics, and prebiotics on intestinal permeability markers".
5/9/2025 Dr. Kali Rubaii co-edited book, The Social Properties of Concrete. Like concrete itself it draws together essays by social scientists, historians, architects, artists, and urban planners who each blend social theory, material science, and empirical analysis to explore the ways in which social life is embedded within concrete and to inquire about how concrete shapes social life.
5/5/2025 Dr. Dada Docot published "Photos from the Migrant Archive: The Experience of Overseas Filipino Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic" in Practicing Anthropology. Docot discusses in her piece how requesting photographs from informants, rather than instructing in any way, opens up possibilities for researchers to recognize respondents as knowledge producers themselves.
O. MICHAEL WATSON AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING GRADUATING SENIOR
Congratulations to the following students who received the Department of Anthropology's top honors for academic achievement and service, the O. Michael Watson Award for Outstanding Graduating Senior. The Award is named in honor of our legendary professor, Dr. O. Michael Watson (1936-2012), whose dynamic undergraduate courses excited decades of anthropology students. Each year, the student selected goes on to be nominated for consideration for the College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Student Award.
2023 Creighton Burns 2022 Samuel Bakeis 2021 Kayla Lopez
2020 Elizabeth Kriebel
2019 Isabelle Ortt
2018 Bridget Curry
2017 Kate Yeater
2016 Jonathan Micon
2015 Michael Lockman
2014 Katelyn Revis
2013 Alisha Yadav
2012 Donald Pattee
2010 Monya Anderson
2009 Marcus Glassman
2008 Sarah Kinder
2007 David Fitzsimmons
WALTER HIRSCH AWARD
Walter Hirsch was a Purdue faculty member in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology from 1947 until his retirement in 1989, who specialized in social movements and the sociology of science. His family and friends established this award in his memory in recognition of his long-time interest in and support of graduate students. Each year, the award provides approximately $1,000 to help with the costs of dissertation research for one doctoral candidate in Anthropology and one in Sociology.
2015 Ingrid Ramon Parra
2014 Jonas Ecke
2013 Elizabeth Wirtz
2012 Sarah Schrader
2011 Franco Lai
2010 Katie Smith
2009 Lesley Daspit
Remembering Those That Went Before
O. Michael Watson (1936-2012)
Dr. Watson was born in 1936 in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up in Colorado. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, he studied anthropology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and earned a BA and Ph.D. In 1967 joined the Purdue University faculty as one of the founders of the Anthropology Department. Professor Watson’s early research focused on proxemic analysis, which he published in Proxemic Behavior: A Cross-Cultural Study (Mouton, 1970). He subsequently turned to visual anthropology, which led to a number of publications and graduate seminars, as well as his production of the classic film Spirit of Ethnography. Professor Watson was one of the founders of anthropology at Purdue, and he devoted his career to the growth of the discipline and to the department. A renowned teacher and beloved professor, he won numerous teaching awards during his 40 years at Purdue. Generations of students took his love of anthropology and enthusiasm for human cultural diversity along with them as they pursued their many directions. Known for his energy and amazing ability to find humor everywhere, he is remembered for the joy and laughter he brought to so many lives. When Professor Watson retired in 2007, the Department of Anthropology honored him by naming our annual student award after him. 
Jay O’Brien (1947-2013)
Jay O’Brien was born in New Jersey, in 1947 and grew up in California. He came of age influenced by the music, activism, natural beauty, and the social concerns of 1960s California. After being an exchange student in Sweden when he was 17 and doing a study abroad in Germany, he was inspired to become an anthropologist. He studied anthropology at Stanford University and the University of Connecticut (Ph.D. 1980).
Professor O’Brien studied the long-term effects of colonial regimes in Africa, and wrote his master’s thesis on Portuguese empire in Africa, 1415-1961. Subsequently, he spent 5 years in Sudan, researching agricultural labor and development, using political economy and ethnography to understand family dynamics, ethnic identification shifts, and development dilemmas in Sudan. Among his publications were three books—on political economy and development in Sudan, and on the intersection of history and anthropology.
His career was about social justice and the process of change, analyzing the conditions of poverty, the dilemmas of development, and their impacts on human cultural life. He became deeply engaged in teaching, achieving tenure at Lawrence University and teaching at a dozen other universities in Sudan, Sweden, Botswana, and the U.S. He came to Purdue in 2008 with his life partner, Ellen Gruenbaum, to be part of the newly launched independent Department of Anthropology.