Recent Alumni

Jung Eun Kwon

Jung Eun Kwon is a PhD student in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh. Jung Eun received her Master of Arts degree in Anthropology at the Seoul National University. Her research interests broadly include knowledge production and experiences of mental health and care. In her dissertation project, she specifically focuses on the suicide prevention initiatives in South Korea to examine the dynamic relationships among the policies, practices, and experiences surrounding suicide and suicide prevention.

Degrees and Education

MA - Anthropology – Seoul National University, South Korea (2016)
BM - Korean Music – Seoul National University, South Korea (2013)

Awards

Fulbright Graduate Study Award (2018-2020)

Hsi-Wen Chen

Chen Hsi-Wen's dissertation will investigate how and why a form of institutionalized social inequality was promoted and maintained in Hongshan society (4500-3000 BCE), Northeast China. More specifically, demographic reconstruction from regional-scale survey will provide implications for how people interacted with each other in social, political, and economic terms. His other interests include power relations, space, and emotions.

Degrees and Education

BA in Anthropology, National Taiwan University, 2015

Carolina Forgit-Knerr

Carolina Forgit-Knerr is a cultural anthropologist interested in anthropology of bureaucracy, political and legal anthropology, migration, and politics of care. Her dissertation project deals with international and national responses to displacement in the context of Colombia where Carolina is looking at the bureaucratic infrastructure evolving to organize Venezuelan migrants. She is exploring the intersection between international and local humanitarian aid, government officials, and migrants by investigating the way in which international and national interests, political ideologies, financial donors, and migrants’ own goals become bureaucratically salient.

 

Degrees and Education

BA in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Free University Berlin , 2017 BA thesis: “ Wir sind Einzelkämpfer!“ Administrative decision - making and boundary objects in a state - mandated bureaucratic framework Advisor: Olaf Zenker

Amanda Suarez Calderon

Amanda is interested in the emergence of social complexity in pre-Columbian Southern Costa Rica, and particularly in the role of warfare in that process. In a region where lines of evidence typically used in the archaeological study of warfare (skeletal remains and fortifications) are not feasible to investigate due to preservation issues, but the ethnohistoric record, with detailed descriptions of intense warfare during the Contact period (Sixteenth century), and the artistic representations of trophy heads, warriors and captives in stone sculptures and ceramics, indicate that warfare was a relevant issue in the past, Amanda’s research proposes innovative ways of evaluating the intensity of warfare through the analysis of settlement patterns.

Degrees and Education

BA – Anthropology - University of Costa Rica (2014)

Awards

2009 Best Admission Score, University of Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica
2015-2018 Heinz Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
2017 Tinker Grant for field research, Centre for Latin American Studies, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
2016 Summer Travel Grant, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Research

 

 

 

Darius Bittle-Dockery

Darius has recently successfully earned the degrees of Ph.D. and M.P.H. in Medical Anthropology and Behavioral & Community Health Sciences, respectively. Incorporating interdisciplinary methods, including social network analysis and ethnographic observation, his research investigates the intersection between infrastructural communication technologies, information networks, and the experience of chronic disease within the lives of Syrian refugees in Jordan. His other academic interests reside within the subjects of human ecology, economies of surveillance, and science and technology studies.

Outside of academia, Darius has pursued collaborative opportunities with multiple local and international health organizations. Throughout his time as a graduate student, Darius has worked on a variety of projects ranging from improving community-health programs with UPMC in Pittsburgh to standardizing coordination practices with the International Medical Corps in the Azraq Syrian Refugee Camp.

Through his dissertation research and continued collaboration with health organizations, Darius aims to identify areas of intervention that can help address and ameliorate social determinants of health in the lives of refugees and other groups marginalized by social, political, or health inequities.

 

Degrees and Education

Tufts University - Medford, MA | Sep. 2006 – May 2010
BA in Anthropology with a minor in Philosophy

Awards

Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship (2019-2020)
David L. Boren Fellowship (2018-2019)
Andrew Mellon Predoctoral Fellow (2016-2017)
Awarded Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellow (2016-17) (Declined)
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences Diversity Fellow (Summer 2016)
Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellow (2015-16)
Fred C. Bruhns Memorial Award Winner (Summer 2015)
K. Leroy Irvis Fellow (2014-15)
University of Pittsburgh Graduate Expo Outstanding Presenter Award (2015)

Deborah Neidich

Deborah Neidich studies the bioarchaeology of Bavaria, Germany.  Her current research uses a combination of biochemical, archaeological, and paleopathological methods to study the relationship between migration and identity building during the Migration Period (ca. 375/376-700 CE).

Degrees and Education

BA - Anthropology - Illinois State University (2012)
MS - Archaeology - Illinois State University (2014)

Sarah Jolly

Sarah Jolly was an advanced PhD candidate in archaeology at the time of her death in April 2022, from a sudden illness at the age of 30. During her time in the doctoral program, Sarah pursued a core interest in bioarchaeology, mortuary archaeology, and themes of gender and inequality in early Andean societies. In 2019, she directed excavations at the important early site of Waywaka in Andahuaylas, Peru, uncovering a variety of contexts, including several burials and ritual deposits, from Initial Period-Early Horizon (Muyu Moqo) and Early Intermediate to Middle Horizon (Qasawirka) periods. Sarah had completed her excavations and some analysis by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. She wrote up her results while serving as a TA, course instructor, and undergraduate advisor for the Anthropology Department, and had almost completed her dissertation at the time of her death. Primary themes of her dissertation include changing practices of mortuary and domestic ritual and the construction of gender as a form of horizontal social differentiation, as reflected in the mortuary treatment of sexed bodies and gendered human figurines. Afterward, Pitt faculty and friends were able to complete and file Sarah’s dissertation.

 

Sarah was known and loved at Pitt for her fine, inquisitive intellect, her lively sense of humor, and her generous friendship.

 

Publications

2016 (with Danielle Kurin). Surviving Trepanation: Approaching the Relationship of Violence and the Care of War Wounds Through a Case Study From Prehistoric Peru. In: New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care: Further Case Studies and Extended Theory, edited by Lorna Tilley and Alecia Schrenk, 175-195. Springer.

Awards

Rust Family Foundation grant
Gutierrez predoctoral fellowship
Andrew Mellon predoctoral fellowship

Anika Jugovic-Spajic

Anika Jugović Spajić is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology. Her research interests lie in the intersection of medical anthropology, political anthropology, and anthropology of the state. Her research concerns the practices of patient-activists with diabetes and the ongoing negotiations of their position as civil society representatives in the larger matrix of the public-private healthcare system in Serbia, as well as the kinds of lifestyles and ideas of health are circulated through their activism. The main avenue which she uses to explore these negotiations is the (re)delegation of various responsibilities for provision of care between the state, civil society, and citizens.

Publications

Jugović Spajić, Anika. 2012. A u većini slučajeva nisam ja: fenomenološka analiza iskustava osoba koje pate od primarnih glavobolja [And in Most Cases I’m Not Myself: a Phenomenological Analysis of Experience in Persons with Primary Headaches], Sintezis, 4(1): 157-174. (In BCMS)

Degrees and Education

MA in Ethnology and Anthropology, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia (2014)
BA in Ethnology and Anthropology, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia (2011)

Research

Civil Society Scholar Award, Open Society Foundation (2018)

Klinzing Grant for Dissertation Research, European Studies Center, University of Pittsburgh (2018)