Recent Alumni

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

Wei Mei (Nicolette) Wong

Nicolette Wei Mei Wong is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in anthropology with a focus on intimacy, technology, and China. Her current project looks at the impact and affordances mobile platforms like dating apps have on existing social mores surrounding intimacy.

Research interests: Human-computer interaction, user experience research, gender studies, technology, intimacy, family studies, urban China

 

Publications

Wong, W. M. (2019). The politics of pity versus piety: The poetics and politics behind different feminist accounts on the Muslim Woman. Journal of Islamic and Middle Eastern Multidisciplinary Studies. 6 (1), 1-25.

Wong, W. M. (2016). Parental matchmaking: Is it really such a selfless act after all? A case analysis of China’s marriage markets. Asian Profile, 44(4), 315-325.

Wong, W. M. (2016). Past matchmaking norms and their influence on contemporary Marriage Markets in China. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, VIII(3), 371-383.

von Gleichen, R., Barker, C.E., Bowen, C.S., Larsen, O., Shillabeer, O., Tan, G. Y., Wong, W.M., & Youssef, A. (2016). Affordable childcare when you need it? Childcare opening hours in the context of the Childcare Act 2016.

Wong, W.M., Chung, S.; Guidi, L., Goh, M.S., Jiang, Y., Miklos, M., & Stinton, H. (2016). British Chinese secondary students and racial bullying: Understanding British Chinese students’ racial bullying experience in secondary schools. OxPolicy.

Wong, W. M. (2015). Consumer preferences between hypermarkets and traditional retail shophouses: A case study of Kulim consumers. Asian Profile, 43.

Wong, W. M. (2014). Finding “love” in China: An overview of Chinese marriage markets (BaiFaXiangQin). Student Pulse, 6(12).

Wong, W. M. (2014). AirAsia's application of the 'Thirty-six stratagems'. Undergraduate Research Journal for the Human Sciences, 13(1).

Degrees and Education

MSc Sociology, University of Oxford
BBA International Trade, Central China Normal University

Awards

2020 Predissertation Travel Grant from the Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Program in China Studies (2020)
Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship in China Studies (Academic Year 2020)
Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship in China Studies (Academic Year 2018-2019)
International Studies Fund Grant (Summer 2018)
University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Anthropology Graduate Student Small Grants for Research (Summer 2018)
Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship in China Studies (Academic Year 2017-2018)
Khazanah - Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies Merdeka Scholarship (2017)
CCNU Distinguished Student Scholarship 华中师范大学优秀学生奖学金 (Academic Year 2011-2015)
Outstanding Academic Achievement Award CCNU, CICE (2015)

Francisco García-Albarido

Francisco García-Albarido research how political-economic processes reshaped the socioeconomic structures of Latin-American local communities since the early modern era. One of his main objects of study is the interplay between colonial routes and market expansion in the South-Central Andes. In specific, Francisco is interested in how local communities engaged with the mercantile flow and made possible the market expansion, and how this participation crystallized new dimensions of inequality and consolidated new local elites. He is exploring these dynamics in the local communities that constituted the routes of Potosí both in Chile and Bolivia. Francisco earned a bachelor’s degree in archaeology at the University of Chile and a master’s degree in anthropology at Colorado State University. His professional experience includes more than a decade of survey, excavation and material culture analysis in the Atacama Desert and the Altiplano.