Maria graduated in 2020 from the College of Saint Benedict with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, concentration in Anthropology, and minor in Hispanic Studies. Her undergraduate thesis explored the affective responses of Venezuelan migrants in Santiago, Chile to the State and bureaucratic entities. Maria’s research interests are environmental justice, political ecology, decolonization, and migration. Additionally, Maria is committed to community-based participatory research and using anthropological research to contest and dismantle institutionalized forms of discrimination and to aid in activist movements.

Lauren graduated from the University of South Alabama in May 2021 with a BA in Anthropology and minor in Psychology. Her research interests include globalization, sustainable development, aid networks, geopolitics, and middle eastern cultures.

Brittany received her B.A in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures from Mississippi State University in 2018. She has been an intern at Fort Drum Cultural Resources in New York through the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education. She also spent time working with several Cultural Resource Management companies. She is interested in Old World Bioarchaeology focusing in the Mediterranean and the Near East, pathologies, human osteology, how religion and landscapes influenced burials, and archaeology of violence.

Sarah Jerden graduated from Mississippi State University with a B.A. in Anthropology. As an undergraduate, she worked in the archaeology labs located in the Cobb Institute of Archaeology. Sarah participated in survey and excavation work in Mississippi through Mississippi State University field schools. Her current interests are Near Eastern Archaeology and human interaction with the environment in archaeological contexts.

Laura received her B.A. from Mississippi State University in Anthropology. Her past careers were diverse and ranged from concert piano to welding. Laura’s research interests include historic southeastern archaeology and the Choctaw tribe. Her advisor is Dr. Shawn Lambert.

Steph grew up in Western Canada and worked a wide variety of jobs – including web developer, technical writer, dispatcher, florist, office admin, landscaper, and many more – before returning to school in 2016. She completed a BA in Cultural Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC) in spring 2020, then drove across the continent to start at MSU in fall 2020. Her research interests include human-environment relations, Indigenous-settler relations, ontology, spirituality, and recovery. Steph’s advisor is Dr. David Hoffman.

Mary graduated from Lee University in 2019 with a B.A. in History and a minor in Psychology. As an undergraduate, she also studied at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom as a guest student. Mary’s current research interests include human skeletal biology, forensic anthropology, and bioarchaeology.

Grayson graduated from Mississippi State University in Spring 2020 with a B.A. in Anthropology. As an undergraduate, he worked with SCDNR to conduct surveys of the Pockey Island shell rings and Fig Island in South Carolina. He also conducted surveys at the Hester site in Amory, Mississippi. Grayson’s interest include GIS, Southeastern United States Archaeology, lithic analysis, community archaeology and working with local Native American communities. He hopes to expand on these interests with his time at Mississippi State University and add more to the list.