Graduate Program in Anthropology
Kudos - Spring/Fall 2020

 

Defenses:

Donna Auston: Successfully defended her dissertation titled “To Be Black, Muslim, and Activist: Race, Islam, and Spiritual Protest in the Post-Ferguson Era." on April 6, 2020.

Marian Thorpe: Successfully defended her dissertation titled “Controversies of consent: the contradictory uses of indigenous free, prior, and informed consultation and consent in Panama” on August 5, 2020

Nada El-Kouny: Successfully defended her dissertation titled “Mediating Political Subjectivities: Infrastructure, Mobility, and Social Action in Egypt’s Nile Delta" on September 11, 2020.

Karelle Hall: Successfully defended her dissertation proposal titled “Fluid Sovereignties “ on March 9, 2020.

Gabrielle Cabrera: Successfully defended her dissertation proposal titled “Migrant Futures: Mexican and Filipino Undocumented Youth in California's Central Valley." on March 23, 2020.

Dominique Raboin successfully defended her dissertation proposal titled “Behavioral Plasticity, Growth, and Energetics in Juvenile Olive Baboons (Papio anubis) Occupying Different Habitats”

William Aguado successfully defended his dissertation proposal titled “Plant secondary metabolites, diet and physiology in wild Bornean orangutans

Awards, Grants, Presentations Posters and Papers:

Rebecca Brittain: Received an award for her dissertation research a Leakey Foundation Dissertation Award for her research project titled "The role of the gut microbiome in digestion and energy production in wild Bornean orangutans across shifting nutritional landscapes” for $15,000.

Gabrielle Cabrera: Received the Diversity Innovation Grant for $2500 from the Vice Chancellor. For part of her award, she did writing workshops with undocumented students on campus. She also received a Wenner Gren Dissertation Grant for $20,000 and a Ruth Landes Foundation Grant for $15,000. Lastly, she published a chapter in volume titled “We are Not Dreamers, edited by Leisy Abrego and Genevieve Negron, and published in 2020 by Duke University Press.

Alysse Moldawer: Finalist to attend the SGS CASE workshop in Washington, DC.

Raul Rodriguez: Received a Wenner Gren Dissertation Grant $20,000 for his field work in Bolivia.

Dominique Raboin: Coauthor for a paper published in Ecology and Evolution titled: “Genetic population structure of endangered ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) from nine sites in southern Madagascar”

Alex Pritchard: Presented a lecture on “Consistent individual differences in the behavioral stress response of a wild primate.” At the Sixth Conference of the Northeastern Evolutionary Primatologists, Remote Conference, November 13-14, 2020. Alex was also awarded the Louis Bevier Fellowship for AY 20-21.

Charles Maingi Kivasu: Received a grant from the Rufford Small Grants for Conservation to support his work on community outreach in the Tana River National Park and conservation of the highly endangered Tana Leaf Monkey.

William Aguado: Received an Orangutan Species Survival Plan grant for $5,000, received the Critical Language Enhancement Award ~$5,000 + living expenses to study Indonesian in Yogyakarta for 3 months and he wrote a blog post for Gradfund about applying for a Fulbright.

Eva Mann: Presented her MA thesis “Dietary Isotopic (δ13C, δ15N) Values of Muscle Tissue from Cayo Santiago Macaques Sampled before and after Hurricane Maria” at the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in STEM (SACNAS) Conference, October 2020.

Denise Mercado: The recipient of an Albert Fellows Award last spring from the Center for Human Evolutionary Studies.

Liz Ballare: Postdoctoral Fellow with University of Geneva to study chimpanzee culture and tool use that starts in June 2021.

Alumni Placements, follow-ups

Emily Lynch (Alumna): Was hired by the North Carolina Zoo as Associate Curator of Research.

Stan Kivai (Alumnus): Received 2 awards: 1. Charles Southwick Conservation Education Commitment Award from the International Primatological Society in 2018. 2. American Society of Primatologist Conservation Award for 2020.

Darcy Shapiro (Alumna): Content Manager for Complexly, the company behind some of YouTube's most popular educational channels, like SciShow and CrashCourse. She works on their natural history and paleontology show, PBS Eons, and on a human anatomy and physiology channel that's still in development. She also pitches, research, and write video scripts, and work with freelance writers to develop and edit their pitches and scripts.

Marian Thorpe (Alumna): Two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship at Princeton University in the Program for Latin American Studies.