Anthropologist On The Street

Applied Anthropologist Chris Reeder Young employs her background in urban and medical anthropology to advocate for lower-income homebuyers and older homeowners who wish to age in place.

Dr. David Sutton returns to explore the politics of food and commensality, or eating together, on the Greek island of Kalymnos, both as a way of connecting the past and present and as a form of resistance against external cultural pressures.

Action Anthropologist Dr. Dana Powell collaborates with Navajo (Diné) energy activists and African-American environmental justice activists, using anthropological methods and perspectives to assist in defining and resolving social problems.

Business anthropologist Dr. Amy Goldmacher discusses how her ethnographic work empowers product and software designers to better understand their users and customers. Using anthropological research methods, she helps design new and improved products, software, and experiences that better meet people’s needs.

Lyndsey Craig delves into the anthropology of pubic hair grooming, discussing sexual signaling, the symbolism of pubic hair with respect to hygiene, marital status, or fertility, how body hair is tied to beauty aesthetics, and how the removal of hair is both an intimate practice and a form of identity communication.

Dr. Beatriz Reyes-Foster is a medical anthropologist whose book Psychiatric Encounters explores how culture shapes the diagnosis, care, and outcomes of mental illness in a mental hospital in Yucatan, Mexico.

Anthropologist of religion Dr. James Bielo explores the creationist theme park Ark Encounter, and how its carefully choreographed design seeks not simply to entertain, but to transform the minds of attendees.

Environmental anthropologist Dr. Jessica O’Reilly works in the least populated continent on earth by far: Antarctica. Working with an array of scientists, she turns the anthropological gaze on science itself, helping to demystify the scientific process and how scientists come to know what they know.

Researching the history and architecture of mosques in America, anthropologist Dr. Jacqueline Fewkes examines the relationship between local history, physical space, and social practice to showcase the incredible diversity of contemporary Muslim communities.

Why do modern humans in industrialized nations face dental problems that don’t affect primates, modern hunter-gatherers, and previous generations of humans? Biological Anthropologist Dr. Julia Boughner explains how cultural practices affect the development of our teeth and jaws.