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Welcome Assistant Professors!
Dr. Marianne Brasil is a biological anthropologist who studies skeletal evolution and variation in humans and monkeys. Her research spans work in the field, museum, and lab to investigate human origins. She is thrilled to be joining the vibrant faculty in the Anthropology Department at Western in the fall of this year, and is excited to work with Western students and welcome them into her lab!
Dr. Natalie Baloy is a cultural anthropologist and new faculty member in the WWU Department of Anthropology. Natalie earned her PhD at the University of British Columbia, where she studied urban settler colonialism in Vancouver, BC. Prior to joining the department, Natalie completed a postdoc at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and worked as the Associate Director of Canada House Programs at WWU (the Border Policy Research Institute, the Center for Canadian-American Studies, and the Salish Sea Institute). Here she is pictured with the Salish Sea Studies (SALI) instructional team in Spring 2022 after a soggy trip to Sucia Island with SALI lab students from WWU and Whatcom Community College. Natalie is committed to critical place-based learning and supporting students to learn and live ethically where they live.
Dr. Mariangela Mihai is a sociocultural and visual anthropologist and filmmaker whose work builds on decolonial, intersectional feminists, and sensory ethnographic methods to understand Christian Indigenous resistance on the India-Bangladesh-Myanmar borderlands. She served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Media and Film, in the Culture and Politics Program (CULP) at Georgetown, an interdisciplinary program that focuses on questions of power and inequality, globally. Her interdisciplinary and multimodal research, transnational teaching and activism, and long-term commitment to engaged pedagogy and public scholarship have led her to this position, as an Assistant Professor in Anthropology at WWU.
Dr. Jerald Ek (Jerry) is an archaeologist with research interests in community-based participatory research, indigenizing archaeology, human-environmental interactions, and political economy. After spending most of his career focusing on the Maya Lowlands region of Mesoamerica, he has shifted focus to the Salish Sea region.
Student receive awards and recognition at the annual Anthropology Scholars Week Conference
2023 Outstanding Student Research Award recipients:
Lily Berver “Gender and Repression in Argentina’s Last Dictatorship”
Luke Heinen “Art Against Tyranny: Ukraine’s Resistance of Occupation Through Cultural Expression”
Payton Hyatt & Laila Kleven “Unsettling the Settler Teacher: An Indigenized Inquiry into American Public Education.”
During the 2022-23 academic year, students participated in the following conferences: Unsettling Landscapes Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Seattle WA; Renewal 76th Annual Northwest Anthropology Conference in Spokane WA; and the Society for American Archaeology Conference in Portland, OR.
Professor Monson traveled to multiple conferences during the 2022-23 academic year, including the recent American Association of Biological Anthropology meetings in Reno, NV to present her paper:
2022. Tesla Monson. Teeth, prenatal growth rates, and the evolution of human-like pregnancy in later Homo. Anthropology
ANTH 476 Borderlands
In this experiential bioregional course that includes local field trips, students examine histories, politics, and lived experiences of the land and marine borders of the Salish Sea and across the continent. Students compare and contrast our region's border stories with borderlands around the world. Professor Natalie Baloy
ANTH 312 Field Course in Archaeology
The x̌ʷiq̓ʷix̌ʷalqʷuʔ (Blue Water) Archaeological Project is a community-based participatory research program designed to reorient archaeological practice to address the concerns of indigenous communities and promote greater inclusiveness in perspectives, accessibility, and representation in our field. Professor Jerry Ek serves as a co-director with three colleagues from the Stillaguamish Tribe Cultural Department. The formation of this project involved the reorientation of the WWU Archaeological Field School as an Indigenous-led program centered on local knowledge, tribal research priorities, capacity building, and promotion of unmitigated Indigenous sovereignty over intellectual property. The first season of this new partnership was an unmitigated success, and we will build on the foundation created this summer in 2023 and beyond.
of the x̌ʷiq̓ʷix̌ʷalqʷuʔ (Blue Water) Archaeological Project
Research
2022. Peter Miterko & Sean Bruna. Reframing sense of community with photovoice: perspectives from residents of a permanent supportive housing program who have experienced chronic homelessness, Journal of Community Practice
2022. Tesla Monson. Teeth, prenatal growth rates, and the evolution of human-like pregnancy in later Homo. Anthropology
Articles featuring Monson's research:
NewScientist: Our ancestors’ prenatal growth sped up after we split from chimps
Phys.org: Hominid prenatal growth rates found to have increased after lineage split from chimps
Riff Reporter. Evolution: Wie der Mensch zu seinem großen Gehirn kam und was die Schwangerschaft damit zu tun hat
Science Alert. There's a Weird Link Between Teeth And The Evolution of Pregnancy
Western Today. Our ancestors’ prenatal growth sped up after we split from chimps
2022. Jerald Ek. The inflection points in formative Maya history: the view from the Champotón, Campeche, Mexico. Ancient Mesoamerica
2022. Sobocinski, KL, CD Harvell, NJK Baloy, G Broadhurst, MN Dethier, A Flower, and J Delaney. Urban Seas as Hotspots of Stress in the Anthropocene Ocean: The Salish Sea Example. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene 10(1).
Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene
2014. Judith Pine. Authenticity of the Sign: Travels of a Lahu Song. Erudit
About Anthropology
The discipline of anthropology studies humans in all the cultures of the world, both past and present. This includes humanity's evolution, physical development, and the wide diversity of lifestyles people have created.
Anthropology has three main goals: first, providing a deep understanding of humans, both past and present; second, analyzing and organizing the knowledge gained and making it accessible; and third, engaging in the practical application of anthropology to various areas of contemporary human behavior.
Read more, including information about subdisciplines in anthropology.
