Recent Alumni

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.

Victor Gonzales Avendano

Jose Victor Gonzales Avendaño is a PhD student in Archaeology, focused on Latin American Archaeology at the University of Pittsburgh. 

I received my initial training in archaeology from the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco (UNSAAC) where I obtained my B.S. in Archaeology in 2010 and Licentiate as an archaeologist in 2012. I have worked, support and directed several Archeological Research Projects that covered surveys, excavations and material analysis, mostly in the Cuzco Area covering a time frame from 1000 B.C. to the 16th century.

My research aims to explain the construction, transformation and reinforce of identities caused the impact of complex societies with hegemonic characteristics on local people in the Cuzco region, through material analysis, urban planning strategies and funerary practices.    

 

Degrees and Education

Bachelor in Archaeology degree given by the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco (2010)
Licentiate in Archaeology degree given by the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco (2012)

Dafne Lastra

I am a sociocultural anthropologist enrolled in the Joint Degree Program PhD in Anthropology (focus on medical anthropology) and MPH in Behavioral and Community Health Sciences. My current research interests are in the provision of medical care for Amazonian indigenous peoples, public health and inequities, anthropology of the state, and humanitarianism in Peru. I am particularly interested in how indigenous peoples view and interact with the Peruvian state through the healthcare system.

These interests come from my previous experience teaching courses in medical anthropology, working and researching on topics related to child malnutrition and anemia, intercultural education with indigenous youth, intercultural health, tuberculosis and maternal health, and climate change and contamination of water sources among indigenous communities in the Amazonian region in Peru.

In the past, I have been awarded a young researchers fellowship by SEPIA (a research organization that promotes and funds research projects on agrarian, rural and environmental topics) to conduct ethnographic research focused on family strategies among small coffee farmers, their articulation to the market in Peru, and published articles based on this and my previous research for my B.A. thesis.

Degrees and Education

Postgraduate Diploma, Interculturality and Amazonian Indigenous Peoples, Antonio Ruiz de Montoya University, Peru (2015)
B.A. Social Sciences, Anthropology Major, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (2012)

Research

2018 - CLAS Field Research Grant (Center for Latin American Studies, University of Pittsburgh)

2017-2018 - Arts & Sciences Graduate Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh

2013 - SEPIA Young Researchers Grant (Permanent Seminar in Agrarian Studies, Peru)

Courtney Besaw

Courtney Besaw is a historical archaeologist who focuses on Latin American archaeology.

She primarily works on the coast of Belize studying the colonial period. She is interested in studying ethnogenesis (the continuation or emergence of new identities) and assimilation of immigrant peoples to northern Belize following the Caste War of Yucatan. Her interests also include “illegal” settlements, household archaeology, and identity.

 

Degrees and Education

BS in Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona
BS in Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona

Awards

2017-2018 Graduate Fellowship in Latin American Archaeology
2019-2020 Graduate Fellowship in Latin American Archaeology

Jennifer Farquhar

Jennifer Farquhar studies the evolution of pastoralism in the desert-steppe region of Mongolia. Specifically, her research focuses on changing mobility patterns among foragers and early herders during the Neolithic-Bronze Age Transition (ca. 4500 years ago) to understand the development of social complexity and inequality among later nomadic pastoralists. Her research draws from on-going archaeological and geoarchaeological work carried out at the Ikh Nart Nature Reserve, where she has worked since 2013. Her dissertation research represents the culmination of over 25 years of academic interest and technical experience in prehistoric human-environment interactions, land-use strategies, and technology. Since 1990, she has worked as an archaeologist designing and directing studies for cultural resource management projects throughout California and the Great Basin. During her tenure in resource management, she taught classes in prehistoric lithic technology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and served on the Executive Board of the Society for California Archaeology as Northern Vice President (2008-2010) and President (2010-2013). She is an owner and Principal Archaeologist at Albion Environmental. Inc. in Santa Cruz, California.  She also serves as a researcher for NOMAD Science Mongolia, an international interdisciplinary research organization founded by fellow Pitt graduate student, Dr. Julia Clark.

Publications

Rosen, A, T. Hart, J. Farquhar, J. Schneider, and T. Yadmaa. 2019. Holocene Vegetation Cycles, Land-use, and Human Adaptations to Desertification in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany (2019) https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-018-0710-y.  

Hildebrandt, W., J.M. Farquhar, and M. Hylkema. 2009. Archaeology and History in Año Nuevo State Park. California Department of Parks and Recreation Publications in Cultural Heritage, No. 26. 

Jurich, D.M., J.M. Farquhar, and M.E. Basgall. 2000. Excavations at CA-MNO-680: A Western Stemmed Deposit in the Eastern Sierra. Current Research in the Pleistocene Vol. 17 (2000).

Degrees and Education

MA - Anthropology - California State University, Sacramento (2003)
BA - Anthropology - University of California, Santa Cruz (1989)

Awards

2020 - University of Pittsburgh Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences- Social Science Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship
2019 - National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant
2019 - American Center for Mongolian Studies Research Scholarship
2019 - Rust Family Foundation Archaeology Grant Program
2016 - Melikian Advisory Board Fellowship
2016 - Critical Language Institute Friends Scholarship
2016, 2017, 2018 - University Center for International Studies Travel Grant
2016, 2017 - Predissertation Small Grant Program- Dept. of Anthropology University of Pittsburgh
2015-2019 - National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
2015 - Fulbright Specialist Program (Grantee)
2015 (declined) - University of Pittsburgh Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences- Arts and Sciences Fellowship
2013-2017 - Fulbright Specialist Program (Listed Scholar)