Scholarly updates from HRAF |
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As we begin the academic year, HRAF is pleased to welcome new staff members and to celebrate scholarly accomplishments. Recently, two Research Associates - Cynthiann Heckelsmiller and Dr. Samantha King - have joined the HRAF team. Former Melvin Ember interns Anj Droe and Danielle Russell are now on the HRAF staff as Research Assistants. All four are working on a grant-supported project on responses to climate hazards. HRAF is also joined by 2022-2023 Melvin Ember intern Jake Kalodner. We are delighted to feature the work of HRAF Global Scholar, Raúl Lara Uriostegui, and to announce that HRAF Research Anthropologist, Dr. Teferi Abate Adem, has received his long-awaited Fulbright award. A warm welcome and hearty congratulations to our colleagues!
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We are pleased to welcome two new researchers to the HRAF team. Cynthiann Heckelsmiller and Samantha King join our investigators Eric Jones (PI), Carol Ember, Sergey Gavrilets and Michele Gelfand, along with Research Assistants Anj Droe and Danielle Russell, on a 3-year grant, "Response to Shocks and Hazards Associated with Climate". Through cross-cultural research, this project seeks to understand how groups in the recent past have responded to shocks and whether their social and cultural responses have led to enhanced resilience.
Cynthiann Heckelsmiller is a PhD candidate in Anthropology (Washington State University), holds an MSc in Ethnobotany (University of Kent 2015), and a BS in Botany (Weber State University 2014). Her research focuses on how people develop and adapt cultural knowledge systems in changing environmental conditions.
Dr. Samantha King holds degrees in Anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (PhD, 2022), the University of Oregon (MA, 2015), and Washington University in St. Louis (BA with honors, 2005). Her main research interests include global change, rural livelihood sustainability, and disaster recovery.
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HRAF Research Anthropologist Teferi Abate Adem has finally received a deferred 2020-2021 Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award in anthropology from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
Teferi is among over 800 U.S. citizens who will conduct research and/or teach abroad for the 2022-2023 academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program. Teferi will be teaching anthropology courses at Wollo University in Dessie, Ethiopia. He will also conduct ethnographic research on the social dimensions of how farmers in two ecologically contrasting rural communities are responding to vagaries of climate change-aggravated irregularities in the onset, duration and intensity of rainfall during local growing wet seasons.
This project is an important follow-up to key findings of HRAF's recently completed worldwide cross-cultural research project on possible links between cultural transformations and environmental hazards. Findings of this NSF-supported study show that societies that face recurrent natural hazards display many common features including prevalence of a range of cultural mechanisms and institutionalized practices for sharing food and labor in times of scarcity.
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HRAF welcomes Melvin Ember Intern, Jake Kalodner, who will work with us for the 2022-2023 academic year.
Jake graduated cum laude from Yale University in 2021 with a dual BA in Archaeological Studies and Anthropology, with honors. He has participated in archaeological projects in the American Southwest, Spain, Ireland, Mongolia, and Peru, as well as cultural resource management projects in the Mid-Atlantic region. Recent work includes working on the creation of a new set of standards for the pXRF analysis of ceramics (Frahm et al., 2022), as well as the archaeomagnetic dating of burned soil samples from the site of Chawin Punta in the Peruvian central highlands.
Jake's interest in addressing such questions that are not often easily answered by the scant remains found at archaeological sites has led him to cross-cultural anthropology and ethnography, which he believes can lend significant insight into the everyday lives of archaeological societies, and is excited to be pursuing this further at HRAF. He is currently in the process of applying to graduate school.
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This month's featured HRAF Global Scholar, Raúl Lara Uriostegui, is a psychologist and has a master’s degree in cognitive science. He recently successfully defended his thesis entitled: "Alloparentality and its relationship with the teaching-learning process (Systematic review in modern hunter-gatherer societies)". He is currently an active collaborator in the anthropology and cognition laboratory of CINCCO-UAEM, where he is working on the publication of two articles derived from his dissertation and on his application to a doctoral program.
The dissertation carried out by Raúl examines the importance of alloparental behaviors, that is, the help that the other members of the group give to mothers and their children in the upbringing process. The objective of his research was to characterize the participation of alloparental individuals in the teaching-learning process of two subsistence techniques: the collection of honey and baobab, in infants of three modern hunter-gatherer societies of Africa: The Hadza, The San, and The Mbuti, from a systematic review of ethnographic works.
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