Erik Hendrickson
Hailee Hove
Jose Huizar
David Hyde
Samuel Katzman
Sonia Khachikians
Sandra Kirkwood
Sam Kobari
Cassandra Krum
Wendy Leicht
Matt Maxfeldt
Nadia Merino Chavez
Keshia Montifolca
Brett Moore

Ben Nugent
Jeff Peterson
Barbara Quimby
Stephen Rochester
Linda Sanchez
Savanna Schuermann
John Spotts
Sean Tangco
Tiffany Wade
Lynn Merrill Weyman
Charles Whitney
Michael Wilken
Brenda Wills
Lang Yin

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Annika Adamson
forswornlove@yahoo.com

Annika received her BA in Anthropology from San Francisco State University in 2008. She is now working on her Masters in Anthropology at San Diego State. Her focus is Cultural Anthropology and her interests are binational identity, youth and gender studies.

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Trudi Andres
trudiandres@yahoo.com
Trudi received her Bachelor's Degree in anthropology from California State University San Marcos in 2008. She is now pursuing her Masters Degree at SDSU with a focus on Applied Anthropology. Her research interests lay with refugee communities and resettlement.

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Jessica Bates
jbates@rohan.sdsu.edu
Jessica received her BA from Chapman University in psychology and is currently pursuing her MA in cultural anthropology. She has conducted research in the Valley of Oaxaca on microcredit and transnational migration, and is currently exploring how both are used as strategies for economic diversification within the family. Her thesis will revolve around how narratives about both economic strategies display a fluidity in communal identity in terms of traditional lifestyles and participation in more global economies, as well as how economic diversification functions at the local level for a transnational community. Her more general interests include identity, narrative, power, migration, postcolonial studies, globalization, and linguistics. Jessica previously coordinated the Education Outreach Program for Collections Management at SDSU.
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Velma V. Calvario Tlahuancapa
Velma V. Calvario Tlahuancapa is pursuing a graduate study leading to the Masters of Arts in Applied Anthropology with an emphasis in Cultural Anthropology. She desires to be an indigenous socio-cultural anthropologist who collaborates with the Nahuas of the low mountain region of Guerrero, Mexico in a lifetime effort towards language reclamation and revitalization. Her interest is not only anthropological, but also deeply personal because she is a member of a Nahua community from the region. Her thesis research will look at the endangered Nahuatl language in the lower mountain region of Guerrero and explore the current effort of indigenous teachers
to empower a Nahua identity in order to maintain, reclaim and revitalize their language. Her research looks at the call by Nahuatl teachers for the reclamation and revitalization of the language through literature and the arts in which Nahuatl is argued not only acquires a linguistic, artistic, and literary value, but also empowers a Nahua identity that serves as a defense for the language. Her research is in the works of rendering a hopeful possibility towards language reclamation/revitalization.
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Elena Carver
ecarver@rohan.sdsu.edu
Elena holds a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Washington (2008), and is currently focusing on a combination of biological and cultural anthropology. She is primarily interested in primate behavior, evolutionary biology, and the interface between humans and non-human primates in a captive setting.

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Kathy Collins
kathycdesigns@aim.com
Kathy holds a Bachelor's Degree in product design from Pratt Institute.
She is now pursuing her Master's Degree at SDSU with a focus on
Historical Archaeology. Her research interests include southwestern and historical California archaeology.

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Celina Corona-Romero
leonelacr88@yahoo.com
Celina studied Anthropology and Women's and Gender Studies as an undergraduate at Sonoma State University. Her subfield is cultural anthropology.
Her interests in anthropology are: cultural anthropology on the Applied anthropology track, gender issues, Latin American communities, representation, concepts of identity, etc.

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Jules Downum
downum@rohan.sdsu.edu
Jules is studying sociocultural anthropology. She is particularly interested in the role of dance in cultural identity formation and would like to research the application of dance as a tool in identity negotiation.

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Rachel Droessler
droesslerr@gmail.com
Rachel Droessler received her BS is Anthropology with a secondary emphasis in Spanish from Juniata College in 2010. She is now pursuing her Masters Degree at San Diego State University with an emphasis in Historical Archaeology. Her interests include the historical archaeology of San Diego, household archaeology, and historical faunal remains.

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Erin Durbin-Sherer
littleamelie@hotmail.com
Erin is a third-year Cultural Anthropology grad student at SDSU, where she also got her BA in Anthropology in 2008. She is interested in identity construction and political and sexual anthropology. Her current research project is about young men and their attitudes toward gender equality and feminism.
"...she's a force for change as opposed to the status quo." -Peter Chung
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Elizabeth Eklund
felisbieti@juno.com
Elizabeth is interested in the intersection of people and nature. She received her B.S. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004. Her B.S. is in Enviromental Sciences, with minors in Anthropology and Environmental Economics and Policy. She went on to earn a M.S. in Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia (UVA), Charlottesville in 2007. At UVA, she studied how natural and cultural resources are preserved in the US National Park System, focusing on how parks are formed and what this means for local people. At San Diego State University, Elizabeth seeks to learn an anthropological toolkit to apply to these environmental research questions.
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Elyssa Figari
efigari@gmail.com
Elyssa received her BA in archaeology from Willamette University, Oregon in 2005. Prior to beginning her graduate studies at SDSU in 2011, she participated on rock art expeditions in Italy and Egypt, held the position of Archaeological Collections Manager at the Museum of the American Indian in northern California, and worked for several cultural resource management (CRM) firms. She is currently employed as an environmental planner at Kleinfelder, an engineering and environmental consulting firm. Elyssa's research interests include museums, collections management, and prehistoric archaeology.
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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'.

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Marco Flores
marcolicious@gmail.com
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 currently pursuing a Masters in Anthropology from San Diego State University with a focus in Linguistic Anthropology. His research interests include: identity studies, gender, sexuality, queer anthropology, LGBT communities, Fat studies, Jotería, ethnolinguistics, semiotics, and education. His current research investigates how masculinity is embodied in the Bear identity, a gay male subculture, and expressed through semiotics.
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Erik Hendrickson
erikhendrickson8@gmail.com
Erik received his BA from the University of California at Santa Cruz in cultural anthropology in 2007. He is currently pursuing a Masters in Applied Anthropology with a focus on Medical and Public Health Anthropology. As a product of his applied project creating an Aquaponics system, his thesis research looks into the ways that physical health and diet are perceived by institutionalized unaccompanied minors and their caregivers using mixed method approaches. Other research interests of his are globalized health, the history of medicinal and public health thought, epistemology, bioethics, subjectivity, and semiotics.
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Hailee Hove
hhove11@hotmail.com
Hailee began the Graduate Program at San Diego State in Fall 2009. Her interests include: primatology, biology, evolutionary anthropology and behavioral ecology with a specific interest in primate behavior, ecology and communication. She plans to do her thesis research at the San Diego Zoo observing vocalizations and other modes of communication.

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Jose Huizar
huizar55@gmail.com
Jose received his BA in Anthropology from San Diego State University in 2011. He is now pursuing his MA in Applied Anthropology at SDSU with a focus on sociocultural anthropology.
His interest include: immigration/migration, politics, power and economy.

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David Hyde
Dghyde14@gmail.com
David graduated from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in 2009 and is currently a first year graduate student focusing in archaeology. He is interested in Mesoamerican archaeology; specifically settlement and household archaeology, bioarchaeology, and ancestor worship in the Maya lowlands.

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Samuel Katzman
skatzman923@gmail.com
Samuel Katzman received his BA in Anthropology from the University of California, Davis. He is interested in Cultural and Medical anthropology.

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Sonia Khachikians
sonikians@gmail.com
Sonia Khachikians received her BA in Anthropology from New York University in 2010. She is now pursuing her MA in Anthropology with an emphasis in Medical Anthropology. Her interests include health care practices for children, child development and child & adolescent mental health.

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Sandra Kirkwood
kirkwood.sandra@gmail.com
Sandra received her B.A. in art and design from Missouri State University in 2005. After several years in the U.S. Navy, she returned to school and is an anthropology graduate student at San Diego State University. Sandra's focus is in cultural anthropology, and her research interests include the military, art, and the concepts of self identity and expression.

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Sam Kobari
skobari@gmail.com
Sam’s focus is on Physical Anthropology. His interests revolve around Forensic Anthropology and Paleopathology.

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Cassandra Krum
krum@rohan.sdsu.edu
Cassandra Krum earned her BA in anthropology at Washington State University where she studied the ceramics of prehistoric pueblo peoples. As a San Diego State University Grad student she is focusing on Mesoamerican Archeology. Her interests include ceramic analysis, power, exchange, and markets.

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Wendy Leicht
leicht@rohan.sdsu.edu
Wendy is a second year graduate student in the Anthropology department at SDSU. Her interests lay in cultural anthropology; specifically nutritional anthropology and environmental anthropology in the Pacific Island region.

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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.
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Nadia Merino Chávez
nadia_merino@yahoo.com
merino@rohan.sdsu.edu
Nadia Merino Chávez is pursuing a Master’s degree in 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 was a 2008-2009 recipient of the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship studying Tu’un Sa’vi, the indigenous language spoken by Mixtecos. Her research interests include applied anthropology ,linguistics, ethnicity, globalization, immigration/migration studies, gender studies, health and nutrition.
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Keshia Montifolca
keshia.montifolca@gmail.com
Keshia received her BA from UC Santa Cruz in 2008. She is pursuing her Masters in Anthropology at San Diego State and is interested in historical archaeology. This last summer she was involved with the excavations at the Whaley House in Old Town

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Brett Moore
brett_a_moore@hotmail.com
Brett earned his BA in History and Anthropology at Sonoma State University in 2008 and kicked off his graduate studies at SDSU in August 2011. His primary field of interest is historical archaeology, with a particular focus pre-Colombian Mesoamerican cultures. Specific interests include conflict archaeology, archaeoastronomy, and the connection of both to ritual within Mayan society

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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.
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Ben Nugent
bnugent@rohan.sdsu.edu
Ben received his BA in Anthropology from the University of Hawai’i – Manoa in 2007 and began the Master’s Program in Anthropology at SDSU in August 2009. His interests include: environmental anthropology, political ecology, and the anthropology of development and agriculture. He hopes to examine the shift in agricultural and pastoral practices in Argentina.

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Barbara Quimby
quimby@rohan.sdsu.edu
Barbara is pursuing her Masters in Anthropology at San Diego State, with a focus on issues in environmental anthropology in Asia-Pacific and Latin America. Her research with an island community in Indonesia will explore how resource use decisions are made, how community members become active in conservation planning and management, and particularly how women engage in the process. Barbara received her BA in Anthropology from Occidental College in Los Angeles and spent over ten years working in the non-profit sector, most recently for The Nature Conservancy, before beginning her thesis work.
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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.
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Linda Sanchez
lindaes15@gmail.com
Linda received her Bachelor of Arts from San Diego State in 2007. She is currently conducting research for her Master of Arts in Applied Anthropology with Dr. Perez as her thesis chair. Her study is focusing on the experiences and perceptions of Hispanic unaccompanied minors that enter the USA illegally. She believes that in order to form better immigration policy for these minors, we first need to fully understand the issue. Her research population includes two shelters in the San Diego area. Linda has also done work with AB540 students at SDSU and at Palomar College.
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Savanna Schuermann
schuerma@rohan.sdsu.edu
Savanna received her BA in anthropology from the University of Nevada, Reno in 2009. Currently, she is pursuing her Masters in Anthropology at SDSU. Her focus is in cultural anthropology, although she has several interests lying within the biological subfield. Specifically, she is interested in environmental anthropology, indigenous rights, sustainable development, conservation and the impact of neocolonialism on the contemporary global economy.

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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.

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Sean Tangco
stangco@gmail.com
Personal Website: www.seanthropology.org
Sean Tangco is earning his MA in applied anthropology. He is interested in how ethnicity, socioeconomic status, community, and religion influence how first-year undergraduate students make their decisions while pursuing their degree. Sean also studies immigration policies as well as border conditions between Tijuana and Southern California. He earned his BS at SDSU in May 2011, double majoring in biology and Spanish. As a McNair Scholar, he plans to advance to his Ph.D.
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Tiffany Wade
tw_wade@yahoo.com
Tiffany received her BA in anthropology from San Diego State University in 2009. She is now pursuing her Master of Arts in Anthropology with an emphasis in biological anthropology. Her research interests include ethnoprimatology, primate behavior and ecology, overlapping resource use between humans and nonhuman primates, indigenous knowledge, cultural perceptions of nonhuman primates, conservation and development, as well as captive environmental enrichment and public education.
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Lynn Merrill Weyman
lmweyman@att.net
Lynn is a medical anthropologist, with a background in health care disparities and inequities among patients and medical practitioners. Her studies have focused on how people with schizophrenia and those closest to them contend with this disease, and the changing epidemiological cultural patterns of those diagnosed with sickle cell anemia. She has also conducted extensive research on chronic disabling pain, investigating how people navigate the Western biomedical system to seek relief without or despite being stigmatized. Her current graduate research involves understanding how patient-practitioner encounters and disparities are shaped as patients with pelvic cancers endure radiation therapy as part of their treatment protocol. More specifically, she is studying how patients establish their identities via Internet support communities to better understand and cope with this treatment modality and its many long- and late-term side effects. Other areas of interest include psychological anthropology, issues of subjectivity, and the connection between nutrition and illness. She received her B.A. from the University of California, San Diego, in 2005.
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Charles Whitney
charlie.ethan.whitney@gmail.com
Charles is interested in the socio-economic conditions of humans and how it affects the conditions of both domestic and exotic animals. He is also interested in human trafficking and human rights violations in relations to international migration. He works at a veterinary clinic and is also working as a research assistant for SDSU conducting health/alcohol related studies for the NIH. He is also currently involved in a study on treatment and life of illegal immigrants along the border.

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Michael Wilken
mikewilken@yahoo.com
As an applied anthropologist, Mike has worked 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, and the Mexican civil association Corredor Histórico CAREM to create a Kumiai community museum in Tecate, Baja California. He is also participating in an NSF-NEH “Documenting Endangered Languages” project, recording Kumiai language varieties as spoken in Baja California. His thesis focuses on Kumiai ethnobotany.
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Brenda Wills
bwills@sciences.sdsu.edu
Brenda received her BS in Anthropology from the University of La Verne in 2002. She started the MA program at SDSU in Spring 09 with a focus on biological anthropology. Her interests include bioarchaeology, paleopathology, and forensic anthropology.


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Lang Yin
lyin360@gmail.com
Lang is an applied, cultural anthropologist and received her BA in general anthropology in 2006. Her interests lie in issues of multi-ethnic identity in American culture, the ways in which one defines one's self, and the phenomenon of cultural assimilation, especially within the context of economic and financial pressures. At the moment she is studying Asian immigrant women working in America, and the fluid nature of ethnicity as it pertains to family and work roles.
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Recent Graduates

Erin Blankenship-Sefczek
ebsefczek@gmail.com
Erin graduated with her MA in anthropology in 2011 with an emphasis in bioarchaeology. She received her BA in anthropology from San Diego State University in 2008. Erin is a Biological Anthropologist interested in bioarchaeology, dental anthropology, skeletal biology, paleopathology, morphology and function, and forensic anthropology. Her master's research focused on the bio-cultural analysis of a non-elite Classic Maya population from the western Belize Valley. Her future research interests include looking at the impact and spread of agriculture and its affect on population health and community structure as demonstrated in the biology. She is particularly interested in the peopling of the New World and the spread of disease in different social structures, including those populations who incorporated agriculture slowly compared to those who incorporated the practice quickly
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Maggie David
David2@rohan.sdsu.edu
Maggie graduated in the Spring of 2010. She received her BA in anthropology from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2007. Maggie’s interests include: bioarchaeology, paleopathology, forensic anthropology, and skeletal biology. Her thesis research involved the examination of the human remains from a small, historical burial ground outside of Cincinnati, Ohio.

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Amanda L. Ellwanger
amanda.ellwanger@utsa.edu
Amanda's research interests include: ethnoprimatology; primate ecology and behavioral flexibility; ecological overlap between humans & nonhuman primates; conservation; peoples' perceptions of the environment and conservation; and zoonotic disease transmission. She graduated with her M.A. in May 2010 from SDSU. Her master's research examined ecological overlap and cultural attitudes towards the Guizhou snub nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus brelichi) in Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve. Amanda is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at San Antonio. For her doctoral research she plan to examine the behavioral ecology of chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) in Western Cape, South Africa. She will also examine peoples' attitudes towards chacma baboons and conservation.
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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.



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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, nutritional anthropology, nutrition education in children, subjectivity, evolutionary psychology, medical travel, and the semantic derogation of women. She is a TA at SDSU and is the Book Reviews Editorial Assistant for the Medical Anthropology Quarterly. Her research looks at the ways teachers negotiate childhood nutrition in the classroom.
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Douglas Joseph La Rose
douglas_larose@yahoo.com
Personal Website
Douglas completed the Applied Anthropology program in early 2011. His research concerns human-environment relationships in rural Ghana as they pertain to agricultural strategies and environmental change. In particular, he is interested in the ways rural farmers have perceived changes in the environment and embodied these perceptions in narratives as well as adaptability strategies. These narratives range from observations that spiritual beings and "dwarves" who live in the forests have vanished, to complex ethno-ecological understandings of the hydrologic cycle as they pertain to weather perturbations. Adaptability strategies undertaken by rural farmers include planting more drought-resistant crops and implementing agricultural strategies traditionally practiced in more arid, northern regions. His ethnographic fieldwork gives voice to "local" perspectives on broader issues such as climate change and looks at how these perspectives both mirror and challenge the "global" discourse on climate change. He currently lives in Ghana with his wife and son
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Conor Muirhead
conor_muirhead@yahoo.com
Conor graduated in the Spring of 2009 and has been working in Cambodia for several months. Conor is an urban anthropologist focusing in the re-imagination of historic urban space, who’s thesis emphasized Old Town, San Diego. He also focuses on the commoditization of history and the commoditization of space at tourist locations.

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Angie Pham
nanami2k8@hotmail.com
Angie is a second year graduate student interested in prehistoric and historical archaeology. She has been involved in the Whaley House excavations in Old Town San Diego and plans to focus her thesis on this site in hopes of being able to continue the reconstruction of San Diego's history.

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Tim Sefczek
tsefczek@hotmail.com
Tim graduated in the Spring of 2009. His 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.
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Jaima Smith
jaima_smith@hotmail.com
Jaima's research interests include primate behavior & ecology; socioecology; reintroduction; and conservation. Her current research focuses on whether wild-born, captive-raised Javan gibbons (Hylobates moloch) can acquire the appropriate behavioral repertoire necessary to be reintroduced and survive in the wild after a period of rehabilitation. She is conducting her research at the Javan Gibbon Rescue & Rehabilitation Center in Gunung Gede Pangrango National Park, West Java, Indonesia.
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Kristin Tennesen
ktennesen819@yahoo.com
Kristin graduated in the Spring of 2010. She received her BA from SDSU in 2007. Her interests include historical archaeology, faunal analysis, and bioarchaeology. Her thesis research involved analysis of the faunal remains and soil chemistry from the historical homestead of San Diego pioneer Nate Harrison.

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Jenna Wehr
jennajwehr@hotmail.com
Jenna graduated in the Fall of 2009. 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.
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