Faculty

Katina Lillios, Ph.D.

Professor

Katina Lillios is an anthropological archaeologist interested in the ways people used (and use) material culture, the remains of the dead, and monuments to create, enhance, and challenge sociopolitical difference and inequality. She is intrigued by the ways that social phenomena and cultural values come to be materialized, and how their materiality triggers social action.

Margaret Beck, Ph.D.

Director of Graduate Studies
Professor

margaret-beck@uiowa.edu

319-335-0286

Currently, Margaret Beck works with Native American ceramics, focusing on the Great Plains and adjacent U.S. Southwest and the characterization of ceramic pastes (including petrographic analysis). As an anthropological archaeologist, she's drawn to ceramics because they relate to so many aspects of people’s lives. These include cuisine and food preparation and serving technology; craft learning traditions within families and communities; and use of local resources and movement with a physical and social landscape.

Elana Buch, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

elana-buch@uiowa.edu

319-335-0535

Elana Buch is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Iowa. A sociocultural, medical, and applied anthropologist, Dr. Buch received her M.S.W. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan's Joint Program in Social Work and Social Science (Anthropology). She is broadly interested in the ways that large scale sociocultural changes shape and are shaped by everyday practice and intimate relationships and how these together generate forms of social difference and inequality.

Cynthia Chou, Ph.D.

C. Maxwell & Elizabeth M. Stanley Family Chair of Asian Studies
Professor

cynthia-chou@uiowa.edu

319-384-3255

Cynthia Chou is a socio-cultural anthropologist with teaching and research interest across all Southeast Asia. Her specific area of expertise is the Malay World.

James G. Enloe, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus

james-enloe@uiowa.edu

319-335-0514

James G. Enloe is an archaeologist working on the Paleolithic of the Old World. His interest centers on the transition from archaic Homo sapiens to anatomically modern humans and on subsequent behavioral changes through the end of the Pleistocene.

Robert Franciscus, Ph.D.

Interim DEO, Anthropology
Professor

robert-franciscus@uiowa.edu

319-335-1421

Robert Franciscus' research program focuses on the Middle and Later Pleistocene periods of genus Homo evolution. He is particularly interested in the evolutionary significance of the distinctive Neandertal craniofacial pattern and the possible developmental, biomechanical, and stochastic models underlying its evolution over time in Europe and western Asia. He is also interested in the origins of modern humans and the definitional problems associated with the concept of anatomical “modernity.”

Brady G'sell, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

brady-gsell@uiowa.edu

319-467-0447

Brady G'sell's research examines the intersection of citizenship, kinship, and economy in the everyday lives of South African families. As the availability of wage labor declines globally, she researches how women rework the obligations entailed by kinship and citizenship in order to combat their social and economic insecurity.

Laura Graham, Ph.D.

Professor

laura-graham@uiowa.edu

319-335-0517

Laura R. Graham is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Iowa. Her research focuses on Indigenous agency and the politics of representation among Indigenous peoples of Lowland South America. She has carried out long-term field research among the A’uwẽ-Xavante of central Brazil and among Wayuu peoples of Venezuela.

Matthew E. Hill, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

matthew-e-hill@uiowa.edu

319-335-1425

Matthew E. Hill's research is informed by the principles of historical ecology, which attempts to integrate the notions of ecology and the environment as central themes in the study of human societies. His work focuses on landscape-scale processes of human-environment interactions expressed in long-term behavioral changes (spanning from the end of the Ice Age to the historic period) across various environmental settings (Great Plains grasslands, Rocky Mountains, Desert Southwest).

Meena Khandelwal, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

meena-khandelwal@uiowa.edu

319-335-2496

Meena Khandelwal’s pioneering research on Hindu celibacy and monastic life examined women who joined what has historically been a hypermasculine ascetic tradition. She has published widely on this and additional topics, including arranged marriage, Indian diasporic dance competitions in the US, and microfinance. Her current multidisciplinary work examines biomass-burning mud stoves in India, women who use them, and those who wish to improve them.

Drew Kitchen, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

andrew-kitchen@uiowa.edu

319-335-2891

Drew Kitchen is an anthropological geneticist with interests in human population history and the origins of human infectious disease. He uses an evolutionary perspective to investigate the processes that have produced observed, modern distributions of human genetic and pathogen/parasite diversity. To do this, he primarily employs computational methods (e.g., phylogenetics, population genetics, and simulation) to the analysis of novel and publicly available genetic and cultural data.

Ted Powers, Ph.D.

Director of Undergraduate Studies
Associate Professor

theodore-powers@uiowa.edu

319-353-2817

Ted Powers is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research focuses on the dynamics of health, politics, and social inequality in post-apartheid South Africa. Building on conceptual approaches from medical anthropology, the anthropology of transnationalism, political economy, and African studies, his work focuses on the politics of health and society in post-apartheid South Africa.

Erica Prussing, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

erica-prussing@uiowa.edu

319-335-0528

Erica Prussing is a medical anthropologist whose research examines the cultural politics of defining and addressing social inequalities in health, especially within indigenous communities. Her projects are frequently interdisciplinary, and emphasize combining anthropology with public health (especially through “cultural epidemiology,” which aims to culturally situate both the causes of health problems and the production of epidemiological knowledge).

Scott Schnell, Ph.D.

Associate Professor Emeritus

scott-schnell@uiowa.edu

319-335-0527

Scott Schnell's research combines anthropology and history to facilitate a better understanding of sociocultural processes over time. For several years, he conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the town of Furukawa, located in the northern portion of Gifu Prefecture in central Japan. This culminated in a book entitled "The Rousing Drum: Ritual Practice in a Japanese Community" (University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999), which explores the use of ritual as a forum for negotiating sociopolitical and economic change.

Glenn Storey, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

glenn-storey@uiowa.edu

319-335-1866

Glenn Storey has two trends of current interest: 1) continuing research on the demography of ancient cities, especially of the Greco-Roman world, focusing on both the scale of gross population sizes combined with special attention to possible demographic reconstruction through funerary population analysis; 2) investigation of the economy of the Roman world, in the framework of world systems analysis, focusing on the evidence of artifacts as found in both Nijmegen, the Netherlands (site of a Roman legionary camp/city foundation) and a new site in central Sicily, Gangivecchio (a possible Greco-Roman cult site).