I graduated with my B.A. in Anthropology with minors in Biological & Medical Anthropology and Italian from UGA in 2025, and through the Double Dawgs program will complete my M.A. in Anthropology here as well. My master’s research is based in the ancient Greek colony of Himera in Sicily. With the guidance of Dr. Laurie Reitsema, I will examine the colony’s weaning practices via stable isotope analysis of dentinal collagen from permanent teeth that form during infancy, focusing on survivorship and mortality.

As an entering Ph.D. student in anthropology at UGA, I will be working under Dr. Danielle Riebe to broadly study past human-animal relationships in the Great Hungarian Plain. I received my B.A. at the University of Central Florida, where I studied in the Zavodny Isotope Geochemistry and ZooArchaeology Group Lab. My past research has utilized zooarchaeological methods throughout Cape Canaveral to analyze Native American inhabitation sites, along with identifying faunal bone and teeth from Croatia and processing faunal bones from Hungary for isotopic analysis.

Aiyana Thomas is a Ph.D. student researching human-environment interactions in coastal regions, primarily the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the U.S., through zooarchaeological and isotopic analyses. Under the guidance of Dr. Victor Thompson, Aiyana plans to evaluate how archaeological investigations paired with historic and present-day data can expand the current understanding of environmental change in coastal landscapes throughout history.

Asif Ali Sandeelo, a fifth-year PhD candidate in the Integrative Conservation (ICON) and Anthropology program at UGA, has received a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (DDRIG) from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for his project titled “A Political Bird: Elite Falconry, Wildlife Laws and Marginalized Communities of Sindh, Pakistan”.

UGA Anthropology professor Suzanne Pilaar Birch is the senior author of a new study that helps uncover how people moved across ancient Türkiye. Working with UGA alumnus and co-author Maxwell Davis and other collaborators, the team improved the chemical mapping tools archaeologists use to study ancient mobility.

Adarsh Kumar Shahi is a first-year Ph.D. student in Anthropology and Integrative Conservation (ICON) at the University of Georgia. He is interested in questions of Land and Forest rights, Protected Areas and Conservation, the ontology of loss and the entangled lives of humans, non-human and other-than-human entities. 

Anthropology has always been about understanding people, but how often does that understanding reach the public it seeks to serve? That question sits at the heart of a growing movement to reconnect anthropology with the broader public, and the University of Georgia’s Department of Anthropology is helping lead the way.

My master’s research focuses on understanding relationships between modern Indigenous ceramic practice and Native studies concepts like survivance, generational knowledge transmission, and traditional ecological knowledge. By examining Native studies literature alongside conversations with potters and community members, I hope to produce research that is grounded in lived experience and contemporary practice.

I am a first-year Ph.D. student in the Anthropology program, with research interests in rural development, agricultural sustainability, climate change adaptation, and environmental justice. My work is driven by a desire to understand how farming communities, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and rural areas of the United States, adapt to environmental and economic challenges in ways that promote resilience and long-term sustainability.