Colloquium: Jess Beck

Title: Discovering Water: Knowledge Production in Academic Archaeology

Abstract: As a discipline, anthropology touts the benefits of an “outsider” perspective for understanding the hidden systems that structure culture and shape daily lives. What happens, however, when we examine our own professional culture through an anthropological lens focused on power, resources, and agency? A growing body of work in anthropology and archaeology investigates the dynamics of knowledge production—how scholars enter the academy and develop and disseminate their research. In this talk, I introduce my recent research on prestige, publishing, and the political economy of archaeological research. First, I  provide an overview of current scholarship across anthropology, situating American higher education within its recent historical context. Next, I focus on academic publishing, summarizing a study that traces the existing prestige hierarchy of archaeological journals and examines the factors that influence where scholars decide to publish their work. After charting the contours of the existing publishing landscape, I introduce an ongoing collaborative project that seeks to transform these dynamics through encouraging deliberation, transparency, and accessibility within archaeological publishing. Finally, I pivot to the job market, detailing the results of a recent paper that examines trends in geographic, topical, and methodological foci of jobs ads in academic archaeology across the last decade. I conclude by offering suggestions for future research and further readings for anthropologists and archaeologists interested in incorporating questions about knowledge production into their own work. 

Bio: Dr Jess Beck is an Assistant Professor and Ad Astra Fellow in the School of Archaeology at University College Dublin, Ireland. She received her PhD from the University of Michigan in 2016, and conducts bioarchaeological research on European Late Prehistory, focusing on the third millennium BC in Iberia and Transylvania.