Graduate Profiles

Jessica Bates
jessicaleighbates@gmail.com

Jessica is pursuing her Master's Degree at San Diego State. She intends to study post-colonialism and the radiating effects of language choice in that context. Her interest lies in how people at the individual level choose, use, and normalize different languages or forms of language in the post-colonial setting, as well as the resulting distribution of power and agency. She hopes to conduct such research in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Nadia Merino Chavez
nadia_merino@yahoo.com

Nadia is a first year master’s student in the department of Anthropology. She has conducted research in Zimatlan de Álvarez, Oaxaca examining how economic changes and the impact of globalization have produced changes in the economy of the kitchen and household experiences for local women. Ongoing changes have affected local food practices as households have begun to integrate new foods into their diet where traditional foods attached to their ethnicity compete with modern foods. She is a 2008-2009 recipient of the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship studying Tu’un Sa’vi, the language of the Mixtec people of Oaxaca. Her research interests include applied anthropology, immigration/migration studies, gender studies, health and nutrition.

Alejandra Flores
alejandraf84@gmail.com

Alejandra is a cultural anthropologist. She hopes to do her research in Hawaii, the Big Island, and the so-called 'hippie' culture and more specifically, the farmer's market. She would like to look at the culture, the reasons for re-location to Hawaii, and what this means for us today in a time of GMOs, global warming, and the commoditization of all things having to do with 'going green'.

Marco Flores
flores34@rohan.sdsu.edu

Marco holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Linguistics from the University of California, Davis (2004) and a diploma in Hispanic Studies from the University of Salamanca, Spain (2002). He is now pursuing a Masters in Anthropology from San Diego State University with a focus in Linguistics. His research interests include: identity studies, gender, sexuality, LGBT communities, ethnolinguistics, semiotics, education, and the supernatural. He is currently researching masculinity and Bear identity and linguistic sustainability of Basque.

Shelby Gunderman
smgunderman@hotmail.com

Shelby is interested in using archaeology and cultural anthropology jointly, pre-historic and historical archaeology in California, and colonial archaeology.

Elizabeth Herlihy
Herlihy@rohan.sdsu.edu

Elizabeth received her BA in anthropology from UC Santa Barbara in 2007. She is a medical anthropologist and her interests include obesity and diabetes in the biocultural perspective, especially in the Pima Indians, evolutionary psychology and the semantic derogation of women. She is a TA at SDSU and is the Book Reviews Editorial Assistant for the Medical Anthropology Quarterly.

Sam Kobari
skobari@gmail.com

Sam’s focus is on Physical Anthropology. His interests revolve around Forensic Anthropology and Paleopathology.

Douglas Joseph La Rose
larose@rohan.sdsu.edu

Douglas received his BA in Anthropology with High Honors from UC Santa Barbara in 2005. His interests include: environmental anthropology, political ecology, historical ecology, ethnoecology, anthropology of development and conservation, natural resource management, indigenous ecological knowledge, agriculture, rural livelihoods, land-use and land-cover change, deforestation, West Africa, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Togo, Burkina Faso. He is a returned Peace Corps Environment and Agriculture Volunteer (Ghana 2005-2007) focused on applied environmental anthropology, particularly in the tropical Volta Region of Ghana, West Africa. He is interested in how indigenous environmental narratives contrast with the problematization of environmental degradation and land-cover change. His goal as an applied anthropologist is to bring local voices into environmental discourses as a means of producing more viable conservation strategies and empowering the subaltern.

Matt Maxfeldt
matthewmaxfeldt@gmail.com

Matt’s research interests include historical archaeology, contact-period archaeology, the archaeology of colonialism, California history and prehistory, and the archaeology of the African Diaspora. His current research concerns determining the social status of African American freed slave and pioneer Nate Harrison, who made his home on Palomar Mountain. He is also looking to develop local grade school curriculum that integrates regional African American history with San Diego history.

Conor Muirhead
conor_muirhead@yahoo.com

Conor is an urban anthropologist focusing in the re-imagination of historic urban space, with an emphasis on Old Town, San Diego. He also focuses on the commoditization of history and the commoditization of space at tourist locations.

Jeff Peterson
petersonjv@gmail.com

Jeff received his Bachelor's Degree in Anthropology from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana in the Spring of 2008. He has been enrolled in San Diego State's Master's program in Anthropology since August, 2008. Jeff is an ethnoprimatologist interested in the variables that affect human perceptions of nonhuman primates. Currently, his research examines the role of folklore and mythology in the relationship between sympatric populations of human and nonhuman primates.

Stephen Rochester
rocheste@rohan.sdsu.edu

Stephen’s research interests include prehistoric archaeology in North America, lithic debitage analysis, applying meme theory systematics in an evolutionary archaeological framework, and group mobility. He is currently working on a thesis that incorporates lithic debitage analysis using macroscopic techniques as well as obsidian hydration analysis, and sourcing using data from a single site. The data should be enlightening in forming a better understanding of the site’s stratigraphic integrity, mobility of the site’s occupants, and will be useful for inter-site comparisons.

Linda Sanchez
lindaes15@gmail.com

Linda is doing her masters in applied anthropology. She would like to conduct research on education and Mexican immigrant children (from low income families). She would like to have more of them achieve higher education levels and she believes that education is one of the ways in which people can break cycles of poverty.

Amanda Sheres
sheres@rohan.sdsu.edu

Amanda’s interests include: ethnoprimatology, physical/biological anthropology, conservation, overlapping resource use, behavioral ecology, community managed resources, globalization and its effects and behavioral flexibility.

Tim Sefczek
tsefczek@hotmail.com

Tim’s undergraduate was in wildlife biology/conservation. His current interests include primate conservation and behavior. His research specifically focused on the feeding ecology of aye-aye in Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar. He has also conducted observational studies on interaction of between juvenile and adult male captive orangutans at the San Diego Zoo.

Jaima Smith
jaima_smith@hotmail.com

Jaima’s research interests include primate behavior, ecology and conservation. Her thesis is a behavioral assessment of captive Javan gibbons in preparation for reintroduction to the wild. Her research takes place at the Javan Gibbon Rescue & Rehabilitation Center in Java, Indonesia.

John Spotts
spottsjohn@sbcglobal.net

John is interested in biological anthropology, in particular ancient DNA and stable isotope applications. He is working with Dr. Arion Mayes on a Late Formative Period Maya series (in the Lower Rio Verde Valley) to determine social organization and long distance exchange using aDNA. For fun he surfs, swims and plays volleyball.

Kristin Tennesen
ktennesen819@yahoo.com

Kristin is in her second year right now. Her interests include forensic anthropology, bioarchaeology, and historical archaeology. Her thesis will be on the faunal remains from the Nate Harrison site on Palomar Mountain.

Jenna Wehr
jennajwehr@hotmail.com

Improving the captive sucess rate of sifakas and other lemurs is at the root of Jenna's research interests. While Jenna's studies focused primarily on ecology and conservation while attending Purdue as an undergraduate, her eyes were opened to the importance of understanding the needs and rights of the peoples surrounding primates studied as a graduate student at SDSU. In the fall of 2008 Jenna studied the behavior and diet of white sifaka in the unprotected forests of southern Madagascar while staying in a local village. Now Jenna is working on her thesis and working as a tour guide at the San Diego Zoo.

Michael Wilken
mikewilken@yahoo.com

During many years working in the field as an applied anthropologist, Mike has had the opportunity to work with indigenous cultural authorities, tribal communities, NGOs, universities, museums and governmental agencies on both sides of the US-Mexico border. These experiences have shaped his research interests in the ethnography of Baja California and linkages with Yuman peoples of California and Arizona, material culture and technology, culture change, cultural revitalization, museum curation, traditional indigenous environmental management and sustainable development. He is currently collaborating with members of the Tecate area Kumiai communities, SDSU Anthropology Professor, Dr. Lynn Gamble and the Mexican civil association Corredor Historico CAREM to create a Kumiai community museum in the Centro Cultural de Tecate. The museum will be designed to educate the public while providing the Kumiai with a space where they can participate in the documentation and interpretation of their own culture. He is also participating in an NSF-NEH funded “Documenting Endangered Languages” project on Kumiai language varieties as spoken in Baja California under the supervision of Dr. Margaret Field, Chair of American Indian Studies.