Recent Alumni

Leah Widdicombe

Leah Widdicombe is a sociocultural anthropologist interested in the anthropology of science and human-animal interactions in the United States. Her research focuses on “Animal Identity”: the ways in which each of us incorporate narratives of science and religion to form our identity around being a human primate. In her first publication, Leah investigated to what extent U.S. law and policy students consider themselves to be an animal, and how this identity might impact their concerns for nonhuman animals in law and policy.

Now, as a Ph.D. student at Pitt, Leah is interested in exploring the role that scientists have in co-constructing our identities as animal. Specifically focusing on animal behaviorists and primatologists in the United States, Leah investigates how culture influences the ways that scientists produce and utilize scientific findings, and how their findings influence U.S. culture and public policy. She questions how a scientist’s gender, religion etc., might influence their observations of nonhuman animal behavior; and how our human senses (sight, smell, time, etc.) used to conceive of alternate animal realities. Conversely, how do researchers’ narratives of “natural” human social behavior (altruism, competition, sexuality) inform and transform human identities, influence social norms, and shape our public policies surrounding gender, sexuality, or immigration?

Publications

Widdicombe, L., Dowling-Guyer, S., I am Homo Sapien: Perception of Evolution, Animal Identity, and Human-Animal Relationships among U.S. Law and Policy Students. Anthrozoös. https://doi.org/10.1080/08927936.2021.1926706

Degrees and Education

MA in Animals and Public Policy, Tufts University, Grafton, MA (2019)

BA in Animal Behavior, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN (2015)

Jordan Bowser

Jordan Bowser is a masters student with a background in history, sociology, and Native American studies. Her personal interests are in bioarchaeology, osteoarchaeology, and mortuary practices with an emphasis on how bone chemistry and isotope analysis can assist in explaining human migrations.

Degrees and Education

BA, Minot State University, Minot, ND 2016

Alexandra Dantzer

Alexandra Dantzer’s dissertation research is an ethnographic study of insomnia in Belgrade, Serbia. She is particularly interested in the ways in which diverse encounters with sleeplessness map onto the broader experience of temporality of the late-capitalism changes in Serbia. In her research the changing politics of sleep, and the experience of people caught amid these shifts serve as a prism for investigating the connection between the macro-processes of economic and ethical change and subjectivity.
 

Publications:

2017, Architects of Happiness: Notes on the mindwork of migration, Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology, Vol. 12(1): 175 – 193.

Degrees and Education

MA, Social Anthropology, WWU Münster, Germany (2018)
MA, Ethnology and Anthropology (focus: Visual Anthropology), Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade (2015)
BA, Ethnology and Anthropology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade (2014)

Awards

Klinzing predissertation research grant, European Studies Center, University of Pittsburgh (2020)
Award for the best MA Thesis, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade (2015)
Best movie (audience choice), Femix festival for Women in Art in Belgrade (2012)

Research Description

Subjectivity and selfhood, temporality, political anthropology, phenomenology, experimental methods in anthropology

Yan Cai

Yan Cai is interested in investigating the range of sociopolitical variation and identifying factors and forces that produce Pacific island societies (mostly chiefdoms) with characteristics, as well as to investigate how these forces interact with each other in single cases. Her dissertation specifically focuses on the role of local scale productive differentiation and economic interdependence in the development of socio-political complexity in Ngkeklau stonework village of Palau (1200-1800AD). Her research attempts to reconstruct the nature and degree of  productive differentiation and other kinds of social differentiation (wealth, prestige and ritual differentiations) in the Ngkeklau village by analyzing the inter-household variation of archaeological assemblages. By studying the extent that any kinds of differentiation characterize households within Ngkeklau village and the connection between them, her research is going to examine the anthropological hypothesis about the relations of agriculture productivity, community structure and local-scale productive differentiation, that is generated based on the comparison of four other Pacific island societies.

Degrees and Education

M.A. Major in Archaeology, Jilin University, 2010-13
B.A. Major in Archaeology, Xiamen University, 2006-10

Awards

Teaching Instructor, University of Pittsburgh (2018 summer)
Teaching Assistant, University of Pittsburgh (2014-Now)

Sharon Toth

Sharon Toth is interested in comparative anatomy of the knee, mainly the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).  She uses dogs as an anatomical model for humans to understand the biomechanical and genetic susceptibility of ACL rupture.  The unequal distribution of rupture rates suggests there is a predisposition, either mechanical or genetic.  Using statistical analyses, Sharon explores the factors that can lead to rupture.  One of her main objectives is to analyze the connection between the identified variables to understand how certain aspects of the body influence the entire biological system.  Additionally, Sharon has participated in bioarcheological fieldwork in Belize with fellow Pitt graduate students.  She also retains her interest in evolutionary anthropology, especially environmental impact on hominin evolution.             

Degrees and Education

BS - Evolutionary Anthropology – Rutgers University (2015)