Every month, the Department of Anthropology shares what faculty and students are up to. Here's some of the exciting news from the community.
Erica Bornstein
Erica Bornstein recently published her new book, A Revolution of Rules: The Regulatory Reform of India’s Nonprofit Sector, with Stanford University Press.
Leah Lowthorp
In July, Leah gave an invited talk in India at the International Festival of Kutiyattam at Kerala Kalamandalam titled "കുറ്റിയാട്ടം: ഒരു നരവംശശാസ്ത്ര കാഴ്ചപ്പാട്(Kutiyattam: an Anthropological Perspective). There she received positive feedback about her book from both Kutiyattam artists and scholars.
She spent four weeks in Kerala, India, this summer starting a new research project on the recent phenomenon of cross-gender performance in Kutiyattam. Whereas men taking female roles onstage is widespread among South Asian traditional theater forms, women playing male roles onstage, as is now occurring in Kutiyattam, is rare.
In September, Leah's first monograph was published with Indiana University Press as part of the series "Activist Encounters in Folklore and Ethnomusicology." In October, an open access version of the book was released.
Michelle Sugiyama
This month I gave a talk and my research assistant Kieran presented a poster on our study of ecological knowledge encoded in lunation names in hunter-gatherer calendars. My talk, entitled “Uso de la Nomenclatura para Transmitir Concimientos Ecológicos,” was presented at the Congresso Internacional de Etnohistoria de las Tierras Bajas, Universidad Nacional del Nordeste, Argentina. Kieran’s poster, entitled “Hunter-Gatherer Information Technology: Use of Nomenclature to Encode and Transmit Local Ecological Knowledge,” was presented at the annual meetings of the Polish Society for Evolution and Human Studies in Wroclaw, Poland.
I also submitted a chapter entitled “Cumulative Culture, Developmental Niche Construction, and Art Behavior: The Role of Animal Mimicry in Hunter-Gatherer Song, Dance, and Role-Playing” for an edited volume on Human Evolution and Indigenous Art (Ed. P. Sorokowski, J. Luty, & S. Craig Roberts).
I was also invited by Open Research Europeto publish a peer review report (currently under review) on the target article, "Use it or lose it: A model-based assessment of the hypothesis that European Neanderthals relied on wildfires to create their campfires."
Josh Snodgrass
The former lab manager of the Global Health Biomarker Lab and SPIT Lab, Allissa Van Steenis, presented results from the Homelessness and Health study at the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology meetings in New Orleans last month: Van Steenis, A.L., Shirtcliff, E.A., DuBois, L.Z., Weaver, L.J., & Snodgrass, J.J. Allostatic load and shelter (in)stability among people experiencing housing insecurity in the USA. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology, New Orleans, LA.
I presented on the Shuar Health and Life History Project in an invited talk at the International Congress of Physiological Anthropology in The Netherlands last month:
Snodgrass, J.J., DeLouize, A.M., Liebert, M.A., Madimenos, F.C., Urlacher, S.S., Schrock, J.M., Cepon-Robins, T.J., Gildner, T.E., Blackwell, A.D., Harrington, C.J., Amir, D., Bribiescas, R.G., and Sugiyama, L.S. Inflammation, aging, and cardiometabolic health among the Shuar of Ecuador: An evolutionary medicine approach. Paper presented at the 17th International Congress of Physiological Anthropology, Enschede, The Netherlands.
Steve Frost and Hailay Reda
Hailay Reda was awarded the Journal of Human Evolution’s Early Career Researcher Paper Award for his 2024 publication "Description and taxonomic assessment of fossil Cerocpithecidae from the Pliocene Galili Formation (Ethiopia)." The Early Career Researcher Paper Prize was established to recognize and inspire outstanding research in paleoanthropology and related fields by scientists in the early stages of their careers. Hailay’s paper was chosen for its high quality, originality, and valuable contribution to advancing our understanding of human evolution. Congratulations, Hailay!
Katelyn McDonough
This summer I had a blast teaching an intensive short course on Intro to Museum Collections and Lab Methods in the MNCH Great Basin Archaeology Lab. I also participated in fieldwork with the University of Nevada, Reno, including a project in northern Nevada co-led by Anthropology undergraduate alum Aiden Hlebechuk. The crew included five generations of UO field students who are now all professional archaeologists—it was very fun and special!
Last week, my colleagues and I published the paper An Early Holocene Crescent and Associated Technologies at Connley Cave 6, Oregon in North American Archaeologist, which presents findings from recent excavations by the UO Archaeology Field School in central Oregon. Coauthor Shelby Saper is a UO Anthropology and field school alum who is now pursuing her PhD at University of Nevada, Reno.
In September, Richie Rosencrance and I presented on “Pleistocene Archaeology at Connley Cave 6” to the Archaeological Society of Central Oregon in Bend, who awarded us a research grant to conduct source provenance studies last year.
Today, Bryn Sullivan and I are traveling to Reno to attend the Great Basin Anthropological Conference. Bryn will present her research in poster titled “Diachronic Perspectives on Diet in the Northern Great Basin: Coprolite Analysis at Last Supper Cave, Nevada." I will present a paper on recent work by the UO archaeology field school at the Connley Caves, and will serve as a supporting coauthor on a poster led by field school student Spencer Chase "Modeling Lake Fort Rock's Late Pleistocene Wetlands using GIS and Optically Stimulated Luminescence Dating in South-Central Oregon," a paper led by MNCH emeritus Dennis Jenkins “A First Look at the Pleistocene and Early Holocene Components at Connley Cave 6, Oregon”, and a paper led by University of Utah graduate student Amelia Muscott, “Reconstructing Human Diet and Occupancy at Last Supper Cave, Nevada, through Ancient DNA Analysis and Radiocarbon Dating of Coprolites”.
Sam Queeno
Sam Queeno successfully defended her dissertation titled A New Perspective on Human Bipedalism: Using Functional Genomics as a Window to Past Physiology on Sept. 22. Sam’s dissertation work investigated genes and pathways that shape muscle biology to understand the evolution of bipedalism in humans. Sam is member of the UO Molecular Anthropology Research Group and was advised by Kirstin Sterner. This work was funded by the National Science Foundation and Leakey Foundation. Congratulations on an excellent presentation and dissertation Sam.
Gabby Jones
This summer I did fieldwork at the Laetoli footprints alongside my colleagues from where we surveyed for fossils and continued work on the preservation of the A prints (although I was mostly taking charge of teaching fossil hunting and bone identification). Afterwards, Steve, Jensen, and I worked for two weeks at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa on the cercopithecoid collections from Plio-Pleistocene Ethiopian sites.
Tanner Anderson
Tanner recently published the first chapter of his dissertation in the journal of GeroScience. Here is a summary of the paper from Tanner: We characterized how gene expression changes across the lifespan in the hippocampus of rhesus macaques. Our findings highlight midlife shifts in gene expression that may be integral in shaping brain aging and could offer insight into increased susceptibility to neurodegenerative disease in humans.
Dee Jolly
Kelsi Kuehn, Dee Jolly, and Zachary DuBois published a new paper from the Transgender Resilience and Health Study:
SturtzSreetharan, C., Kuehn, K., Jolly, D., Puckett, J. A., Hope, D. A., Mocarski, R., Jagielski, A., Gutierrez, J., Dunn, T., Juster, R.-P., & DuBois, L. Z. (2025). Thriving through caring for the self and connecting with others: Lessons of Trans Resilience and Health. International Journal of Transgender Health, advance online publication. Https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2025.2538738
Dee Jolly presented a poster reporting on findings from the Transgender Resilience and Health Study at the 2025 annual meeting of the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology in New Orleans, LA. Their poster was titled "Pride protects where it counts: State of residence moderates the relationship between transgender identity-pride and allostatic load".
STAR lab undergraduate student Ronan Santaniello was featured in a CAS news story about his VPRI-funded summer research with Zachary DuBois and Dee Jolly.
Zachary DuBois and UO colleague Jo Weaver were recently invited to attend a Wenner-Gren Foundation Symposium hosted in Vienna titled "Biocultural Anthropology in the 21st Century".
Tom Connolly
Tom has several new publications:
Connolly, Thomas J. 2025. Mel Aikens. Part of “Mel Aikens—Pioneer” feature, Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 45(1):106-107.
Connolly, Thomas J., Mario Zimmermann, Shannon Tushingham, Perry Chocktoot, David Gang, Anna Berim, and Thomas W. Stafford
2025 Smoking Pipes and Tobacco Use in the Northern Great Basin. Oregon Historical Quarterly 126(3):228-241.
Connolly, Thomas J. and Paul W. Baxter
2025 Does Size Matter? What the Projectile Points from Oregon’s Mill Creek Archaeological Complex Tell Us. American Antiquity 90(3):573-591.
Connolly, Thomas J. Guy L. Tasa, and Paul W. Baxter
2025 Archaeological Investigations at the Mill Creek Site Complex. University of Oregon Anthropological Papers 75, Museum of Natural & Cultural History, Eugene.
Stephen Wooten
Stephen Wooten, Associate Professor of Global Studies, recently gave a keynote lecture at the Czech and Slovak Association for American Studies conference in Košice, Slovakia. The talk, titled: "Melting Pots, Tossed Salads, and (Un)Happy Meals: Food Metaphors and Realities at the Modern American Crossroad,” drew the attention of the Slovak national broadcasting organization, and Stephen was interviewed on the current state of "food affairs" in the US.
Incoming Grad Cohort Bios
Shimiko Montgomery
Iakwe/Hello! My name is Shimiko and I have the privilege of working with Scott Fitzpatrick. My research focuses on the Marshall Islands, a group of islands located in the eastern part of Micronesia in the Pacific. I just finished an master's in Applied Anthropology (archaeology subfield) at Oregon State University, and I’m excited to be here!