Overview
I am Senior Research Scholar and Director of Programs for the Forum for Scholars and Publics at the Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University. A sociocultural anthropologist by training, I have worked in Madagascar, Nepal, and the United States conducting original research and facilitating multidisciplinary public engagement. My teaching, research and public engagement work has increasingly explored the relationship between place, sensory experience, archives, and the creation of individual and collective meaning. My recent publications draw on research conducted as part of a multi-sited collective of researchers exploring the everyday material manifestations of COVID-19. I am also a lead researcher on “Archives and Creative Process: Blues Women and Rosetta Records,” a project at Duke University that convenes a multidisciplinary group to find and tell the stories of the women whose music was produced and distributed through Rosetta Records. My work has been funded by the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the National Science Foundation, Fulbright IIE, the Russell Sage Foundation, and various internal grants at Washington University in St. Louis and Duke University.
Current Appointments & Affiliations
Recent Publications
Collecting and Curating COVID-19 Heritage: Challenges of Conservation and Management
Journal Article Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites · January 1, 2022 The COVID-19 pandemic raises questions about curation, collecting, and the ethics of documenting a traumatic event as it occurs in real time. Such concerns became clear as the co-authors embarked on a multi-sited study of the pandemic’s impact on four comm ... Full text CitePrivate Struggles in Public Spaces: Documenting COVID-19 Material Culture and Landscapes
Journal Article Journal of Contemporary Archaeology · January 1, 2021 The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted nearly every facet of our world, including some of the most fundamental forms of human behavior and our conception of the social. Everyday activities now pose a risk to individuals and to society as a whole. This radical ... Full text CiteLost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar by David Graeber
Book Review American Ethnologist · May 2010 Full text Open Access CiteRecent Grants
Well-being and the Moral Worlds of Refugees
ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation · 2011 - 2012View All Grants