Jane Anderson, Assistant Professor
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Law, intellectual property, Indigenous rights, human rights, cultural property, international heritage, Indigenous political movements, policy studies, coloniality and colonialism, politics of cultural difference, rationalities of governance, archives, authority and expertise, production of knowledge, international organizations, problematics of theory/practice, mechanics of law reform, dispute resolution, critical legal theory, legal philosophy, cultural studies and how ideas travel.
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Kevin Anderson, Lecturer
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My research traverses the fields of film studies and anthropology, particularly along the lines of social aesthetics, phenomenology, and the body. One piece compares how claims of "factuality" and "truth" are made in Reality TV and Mockumentary film; in another I question that categorization of films as "ethnographic," demonstrating various ways we can read all manner of film for their anthropological qualities. My work has appeared in PostScript, Journal of Film and Video, Film and Philosophy, AfterImage, and Medical Anthropology. My film projects have taken me to Ethiopia, Japan, and Ireland.

Whitney Battle-Baptiste, Assistant Professor
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Archaeology: African Diaspora theory, Black Feminist Theory, African American expressive and material culture, Historical Archaeology, African Diaspora archaeology, North America.
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Elizabeth Chilton, Professor ,Chair
Director, Center for Heritage and Society
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CHS website:
Cultural heritage, archaeology, hunter-gatherers, the origins of agriculture, origins of social complexity, technological organization, ceramic ecology, geoarchaeology, and cultural resource management, Native peoples of northeastern North America.
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Emiliana Cruz, Assistant Professor
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Linguistic Anthropology, Indigenous rights, documentation and preservation of endangered languages, natural discourse and oral literature, Chatino linguistics, language and culture, bilingualism, language and identity, language politics, language ideologies, indigenous education, Latin America, Oaxaca.

Seamus Decker, Assistant Professor
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Bio-cultural anthropology: social biology, psychoneuroendocrinology, behavioral ecology, disease ecology; Caribbean, North America and Sub-Sahara Africa.

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Jean Forward, Senior Lecturer
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Cultural anthropological interests with a focus on colonialism, especially in North America and Scotland. I am also interested and active in environmental and human rights issues, especially Native American Indians, public education; community service and the teaching of history.
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Laurie Godfrey, Professor
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I am a biological anthropologist and paleontologist with interests in nonhuman primate anatomy and evolution. I study how individual development provides clues to behavior and to the "life history strategies" of extinct species. I use a variety of techniques to reconstruct the behavior and "lifeways" of extinct animals, with the ultimate goal of being able to reconstruct whole communities of primates in the past, and their transitions to the present. My particular expertise is the lemurs of Madagascar, where I have worked in the field for several decades. On this great island, I have worked with colleagues to better understand the recent extinctions of the "megafauna" (including the giant lemurs).
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Rae Gould, Lecturer, Repatriation Coordinator
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Cultural Anthropology, Historical Archaeology, Ethnohistory, Indigenous/Native American rights and legal issues including NAGPRA and Federal Acknowledgement; Specialization: Post-Contact Native Americans in the Northeast.
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Krista Harper, Associate Professor
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Cultural Anthropology: Culture and the politics of social movements; political cology; medical anthropology; science and technology studies (STS); race, ethnicity, and human rights; area specializations in Eastern Europe (Hungary), Roma (Gypsy) diaspora, and the European Union.
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Julie Hemment, Associate Professor
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Cultural Anthropology: Post-socialism, gender and transition, feminist anthropology, Participatory Action Research Methodology, applied anthropology. Russia.
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Brigitte Holt, Associate Professor
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I am a biological anthropologist interested in human evolution in general, and in the ways humans adapt, biologically and culturally, to their environment. One of my research interests has been on the relationship between physical activity and postcranial skeletal robusticity as a means of inferring behavior in past populations. I was able to show, for instance, that in Upper Paleolithic populations from Europe, there is a marked decline in lower limb robusticity in the latter part of the Upper Paleolithic, after the Last Glacial Maximum (around 18,000 years ago). This confirms archeological evidence of decreased mobility during that period. An ongoing project (the European Project) focuses on the evolution of postcranial robusticity in Europe from Upper Paleolithic to the present, in an effort to answer questions such as: Why do Europeans have such high rates of osteoporosis and fractures? What role does decreased physical activity play in this? When did the major changes occur? What role did factors such as agriculture, social inequality, division of labor, mechanization and industrialization play?   Another research interest centers around the origins of modern humans. Since 2002, I, along with colleagues from Duke University, University of Pisa (Italy) and Arizona State University, have been excavating the site of Riparo Bombrini (Liguria, Italy, a rockshelter  that preserves Middle Paleolithic (Mousterian) and Upper Paleolithic (Aurignacian) layers. The main of this project has been to clarify the transition between Neandertals and modern humans.
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Eric Johnson , Lecturer
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Archaeology

Steven King, Lecturer
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Biological Anthropologist

Elizabeth Krause, Professor
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Sociocultural anthropology: political economy of low fertility; cultural politics of race, gender and class; social memory and historical anthropology; ethnographic writing; economic anthropology; equity and education; Italy and the U.S.

Elizabeth Krause's Blog
http://blogs.umass.edu/ekrause/

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Thomas Leatherman , Professor
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Biocultural theory and practice; political economy of health; biology of poverty; political ecology; health and nutrition; ecology and adaptability; coping with marginal conditions; seasonality; growth and development; Latin America (Andes, Yucatan). Southeast U.S.

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Lynnette Leidy Sievert, Professor
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As a biological anthropologist I have focused on age at menopause and symptom experience at menopause as two aspects of human variation. I am also interested in the evolution of menopause and post-reproductive aging as a human trait. Fieldwork on the topic of menopause has taken me from western Massachusetts to Mexico, Slovenia, Paraguay, Hawaii, Bangladesh, and the UK.
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Enoch H. Page, Associate Professor (on leave AY 2011)
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As a cultural anthropologist my interest lies mainly in theories of race and racism in the United States, but also in Africa and throughout the African Diaspora. My field work - in Zimbabwe, Jamaica, the American South and in urban America - has been concerned with the racial intersection between black populations and bureaucracies like schools, the media, hospitals or extension agencies. Lately, my research efforts have been stimulated by failures in academic studies of racism to explore new pedagogical opportunities to intervene into the routine operations of racism through the agency of spiritual (not religious) education seen as a method of effective intervention. My current seminars, 'The Anthropology of Consciousness' and 'Anthropology of Information' reflect my own theory that activism of the future must be differently informed. I believe it will fail to create the needed change unless activists become more grounded in any eclectic spiritual practices designed to create the inner change that can build new knowledges illuminating the potential roles of activism in the evolution of higher consciousness. I currently am working on two books addressing each of these theoretical concerns.

Robert Paynter, Professor
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I study historical archaeology, something I think of as the investigation of the global development, spread, and resistance to capitalism and European expansion. I start this work with the material culture – the artifacts and landscapes – produced and consumed by people caught up in these processes. These material traces are then woven with documentary traces to develop holistic understandings of how the world of today came into being. I have found it crucial to read the theoretical and historical perspectives on capitalism and conquest developed by authors positioned variously throughout the globe, bringing perspectives of people who know the various political economies and cultural forms of the peoples of Africa , the Americas , and Europe . This global focus frames my field work on sites in Western Massachusetts in the US , including work in Deerfield Village in Deerfield and at the W.E.B. Du Bois Boyhood Homesite in Great Barrington. This said, I encourage and sponsor students interested in these local areas as well as those interested in studying capitalism and conquest elsewhere around the globe. Finally, I hold to the idea that historical archaeology is best understood within a broad anthropological perspective, one that compares and contrasts the workings of the modern world with those of archaeologically known ancient and pre-state societies. I find I can best do this work with colleagues in the Anthropology department as well as people interested in Native American Indian studies, Afro American Studies, and Women's Studies. Reflecting my concerns, I teach our introduction to general anthropology for non-majors, Anthro 100 Human Nature, co-teach courses on Native studies, and co-direct our Summer Field School in Archaeology.
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Ventura Perez, Assistant Professor,
Editor-n-Chief Landscapes of Violence
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Bio-archaeology: My primary area of interest is interpersonal and institutional forms of violence.  My work focuses on cultural representations of violence using an interdisciplinary inquiry that includes social science and behavioral and biological research (specifically skeletal trauma), along with the analysis of artifacts and ethnohistoric research.  I view the use of violence as a cultural performance and argue that in order to understand its use we must strive to recognize the culturally specific circumstances under which it is produced and maintained.  My other interests include skeletal biology, taphonomy, forensic anthropology, paleopathology, and the etiology of diseases affecting the human skeleton. My research is currently in Zacatecas, Mexico at the site of La Quemada (AD 900) and in the greater Southwest.

Jonathan Rosa, Assistant Professor
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Linguistic and Sociocultural Anthropology: multilingual and multimodal communication; language ideologies and standardization; semiotics; ethnolinguistic identities and practices; race; (im)migration and citizenship; politics of multiculturalism; youth socialization and marginalization; education; social ecology; Latina/o Studies; Urban U.S.; Latin America; Caribbean.

Neil Silberman, Lecturer
Co-Editor, Heritage & Society
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Heritage and Society: International Heritage Theory and Policy; Heritage and International Development; Public Heritage Trends; History and Politics of Archaeology; Archaeological and Heritage Narratives.
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Michael Sugerman, Lecturer
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I am an archaeologist interested in inter-cultural contact, exchange, and power relations in ancient complex societies. Throughout my career I have investigated Bronze and Iron Age economic structures in the Near East and the eastern Mediterranean through the use of stylistic, elemental, and microstructural studies of plain ceramics and other non-elite, Œordinary¹ goods. Over the course of the past fifteen years, I have carried out field research in many of the countries of the east Mediterranean littoral: Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Turkey, and Greece. At present I am beginning a project on Cyprus in which I will investigate archaeological markers of ethnic identity as well as the ways contemporary researchers assign ethnic identities and boundaries to the ancient populations of the island. I am also interested in the ways we can use ancient texts together with archaeological data to investigate ancient societies. In order to follow through on this interest I regularly teach classes in the departments of Classics and of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies here at UMass.
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Jacqueline Urla, Professor (Abroad Spring 2012 w/European Program)
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Gender and Sexuality, Language Politics, Youth and Popular Culture, Nationalism & cultural Identitites, The Ethnography of Resistance, Basques of Western Europe, Visual anthropology. I've done long term ethnographic research on the Basque language revival movement examining such issues as language standarsization, youth community media projects, music, and the political uses of language censuses. At the same time, I also teach and write about gender, sexuality and the body; the anthropology of Europe; ethnographic theory and method. I teach courses in the politics and poetics of visual anthropology and have experimented with creating a digital ethnographic video production lab.
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Amanda Walker Johnson, Assistant Professor
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Cultural Anthropology: I am a cultural anthropologist interested in the intersection of critical race theory, anthropology of science, and critical educational theory, and I am committed to conducting research and pedagogy as work for social justice. My research examines the ways in which systems of standardized testing and the production of "scientific" knowledge about race, segregation, failure, and risk, particularly as products of standardized testing, impact education in the US, particularly for African Americans and Latino/as. Additionally, I teach courses related to education and race; critical race theory and political economy of race in the US; feminist theories of race, body, and nation; and cultural and identity politics in the African Diaspora.

Emeritus and Retired Faculty:

George J. Armelagos , Professor Emeritus email: Physical Anthropology, skeletal biology, race and racism, demography, evolution of diet and disease; Mediterranean Africa.

John Cole, Professor Emeritus email: My dedication to the “Pig's Eye Perspective” means that I try to understand the world from the bottom up. So, I'm interested in how the masses of humanity cope with each other, with their habitat, and with those who hold economic, political, and ideological power. Beginning in high school and continuing through most of my intellectual life, my choices have been within the context of the Cold War. Early on in my studies, I abandoned the tribesman for the peasant and the worker and focused on the development of capitalism and the forms of accommodation and resistance it inspired. Since the “fall of the wall” I've been concerned with the expansion of United States militarism and its impact at home and abroad. I have also struggled to understand and resist the threats to intellectual curiosity and critical thinking in Europe and America that seem to be endemic to academic life. My particular ethnographic beat has been Europe, mainly on the Germanic-Romance frontier in the Alps and in the ethnic stew of Transylvania . But following UMass students around I've also become familiar with many other locals and peoples all over Europe . I will also confess to an addiction to “Intellectual Jet-Setting.” The colleagues I've met and the places I've visited in the process have also contributed to my understanding. I continue to pursue these interests, but freed of professional and administrative constants by retirement, I've becoming a true dilettante. I've also been struggling to grow a satisfactory tomato at 2000 feet altitude in the green hills of Vermont

Dena Ferran Dincauze , Professor Emeritus email:

Ralph Faulkingham, Professor email I am a cultural anthropologist with interests in theories of rural development, especially in Africa. My field work, spanning four decades has been in Hausa-speaking Niger in West Africa, and my research interests there have ranged from local level politics to cultural ecology, to political economy, and more recently to writing an ethnography of local discourses about love, life, and death. I currently co-edit the principal journal of the African Studies Association, the African Studies Review. Download full vita.

Joel Martin Halpern , Professor Emeritus email: Cultural anthropology, photography, historical demography, history of anthropology, temporal perspectives as methodologies, foreign policies and societal impacts, digitization of archival materials. Research in Southeast Europe, Southeast Asia, Arctic and with immigrant groups in U.S. and Canada. For photo collections and archives, see: http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/SEAiT/subcollections/LaosAbout.html http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/galleries/halpern.htm http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/umarmot/?tag=h

Alfred B. Hudson , Professor Emeritus email: Borneo language classification. Historian, Randolph (NH) History Project. Archivist, Randolph Mountain Club. http://www.randolphmountainclub.org

	Mitchell T. Mulholland, Research Professor Emeritus email Archaeology: cultural resource management, applied archaeology, archaeology and the law. Northeast North America.
	Oriol Pi-Sunyer , Professor Emeritus email: Cultural Anthropology, political and economic anthropology, the modern state, minority nationalism, tourism, maritime anthropology. Europe, Mesoamerica.

Donald A. Proulx , Professor Emeritus email: Archaeology, Andes, Peru, ancient civilizations, ceramics, iconography, settlement patterns. Since my retirement in 2002 I have continued my research on the Nasca Culture of Peru, especially my analysis of the complex iconography painted on their polychrome pottery, in an attempt to interpret and better understand this pre-literate society. For biographical information, research summaries, and on-line papers: http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~proulx/

Alan C. Swedlund , Professor Emeritus email: Demography and health in historical New England; population dynamics, demography, and health in the prehistoric Southwestern U.S. Recent research includes a book on medical anthropological approaches to understanding the processes of illness, death, and loss in historical populations. Secondly, I am collaborating with a group doing agent-based computer simulations of population transitions in the prehistoric Pueblo people. I am also conducting research on the health and fitness movements of the American Progressive Era. For biographical information, research summaries, and on-line papers: http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~swedlund/

R. Brooke Thomas , Professor Emeritus email: Biocultural anthropology, human adaptability, environmental anthropology, and political ecology. His research has included adaptation and exploitation in high Peruvian Andes, tourism on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, and community reforestation in India.

	H. Martin Wobst, Professor Emeritus email Archaeology: theory and method. Old World prehistory, ecology and demography of egalitarian societies, Pleistocene ecology. Europe.
	Richard Woodbury, Professor Emeritus "We are very saddened by the passing of Richard Woodbury this past October. We plan to honor both Dick and Natalie at our upcoming Departmental 40th Anniversary celebration in April. Please click here for an obituary of Dick, which is reproduced by permission of the American Anthropological Association from Anthropology News volume 51(2), 2010." Obituary