UAF Department of Anthropology Contact Information
Please Note!
All °Ä²Êͼ¿â College of Liberal Arts (CLA) administrative assistants are off contract through the summer and will not return until Monday, August 11th, 2025.If you need any assistance this summer, please contact Isabel Norris in the CLA Dean's Office by phone at (907) 474-7231 or via email at uaf-cla@alaska.edu.
Faculty
Petra Banks
Term Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
BUN 401
PhD, Texas State University, 2024.
Forensic Anthropology, Skeletal Trauma, Blast Trauma, Mass Disasters, Disaster Victim
Identification, Forensic Archaeology, Bioarchaeology, Historic Cemeteries, 3D Imaging
Tammy Buonasera
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
BUN 307C
PhD, University of Arizona, 2013.
Biomolecular archaeology (proteomics, lipid analysis, and stable isotopes), past diets
and health, economic and social aspects of food processing technologies, hunter-gatherer
archaeology, experimental archaeology, gender, human behavioral ecology, California,
northern Alaska, Anatolia.
Justin Cramb
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
BUN 305B
PhD, University of Georgia, 2020.
Zooarchaeology, Cultures of Island Oceania, the Alaska Gold Rush, Historical Archaeology,
Radiocarbon Dating, Environmental Archaeology, Historical Ecology, Animal Translocation.
Elaine Drew
Department Chair, Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology, WGSS
BUN 407
PhD, University of Kentucky, 2004.
Culturally-based health promotion and intervention research with AI/AN, Latino, and
African-American communities; mixed methods research; research ethics review processes
(institutional & community-based).
Sveta Yamin-Pasternak
Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology, WGSS
BUN 305B
PhD, °Ä²Êͼ¿â, 2007.
Food and culture, ethnomycology, aesthetics, Circumpolar North, contemporary art, gender, post-Soviet studies
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Patrick Plattet
Professor
Department of Anthropology
BUN 307D
PhD, University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland), 2005.
Ritual, anthropology of festive events, cultural resources documentation, ethnohistory,
online teaching of ethnographic methods, Alaska/Kamchatka.
Ben A. Potter
Professor
Department of Anthropology
BUN 308A
PhD, °Ä²Êͼ¿â, 2005.
Subarctic and Arctic archaeology, intersite variability, site structure and organization,
spatial analysis, geographic information systems, human-environmental interactions,
field survey and excavation, cultural resource management, multivariate statistical
analyses, lithic analysis, faunal analysis.
Joshua D. Reuther
Curator of Archaeology, University of Alaska Museum of the North; Professor
Department of Anthropology, UA Museum of the North
042 Museum of the North
PhD, University of Arizona, 2013.
Subarctic and arctic archaeology; geoarchaeology; geochronology; hunter-gatherer ecology;
archaeological science; museum studies; cultural resources management.
Robin A. Shoaps
Associate Professor; Linguistics Program Coordinator
Department of Anthropology, Linguistics Program, WGSS
BUN 312
PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2004.
Linguistic anthropology, ritual language, discourse, power, semiotics, ethnography
of morality, stance, human-animal relations, political media; Mesoamerica and the
United States.
Adjunct Faculty
David Fazzino
Affiliate Assistant Professor; Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, Anthropology
Department, Faculty Member.
Medical Anthropology, and Food Systems.
Nicholas Schmuck
Affiliate faculty; PhD. (anthropology) °Ä²Êͼ¿â, 2021; Special
Projects Archaeologist, ADNR Office of History and Archaeology (OHA).
Arctic, Subarctic, and Pacific Northwest Coast Archaeology; Human Behavioral Ecology;
Landscape Learning and Coastal Adaptation; Traditional Knowledge; Lithic Analysis;
Geochemical Toolstone Sourcing; Radiocarbon Dating and Marine Reservoir Effects; GIS/LiDAR
Landscape Reconstruction; Cultural Resource Management
Affiliated Faculty
Research Associate, Alaska Quaternary Center, °Ä²Êͼ¿â. Quaternary paleoecology, palynology, Beringian environments
Environmental anthropology, political ecology, marine policy, fishing communities
Paleolithic archaeology, modern human origins, hunter-gatherer lifeways, zooarchaeology. Southern Africa and the Near East
Arctic archaeology, geoarchaeology, and lithic analysis.
Political and economic anthropology, social movements, transformation in post-Soviet rural communities, reindeer herding systems; rural European Russia, Russian Far North, Alaska.
Affiliate Research Assistant Professor, Ph.D. (anthropology). University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2009.
Research Interests: Biological anthropology, bone stable isotope analysis, past human diet, archaeological toxicology, Arctic and sub-Arctic populations
I study the diet of ancient human populations, primarily through stable isotope analysis of bones and teeth. I am currently working on projects involving the prehistoric people of interior Alaska, from the earliest occupation of the region over 11,000 years ago through the late Prehistoric Athabascan period.
Beringian archaeology, Subarctic cultural adaptations, Athabascan archaeology, lithic analysis.
Long-term ecodynamics of socio-natural systems in Arctic and subarctic environments, coastal adaptations, global change effects on the archaeological and paleoecological record, zooarchaeology, community archaeology
Oral history, traditional and local knowledge, ethnohistory, culture change, food sovereignty, decolonization, political economy, resource use and allocation, community-based research, Indigenous cosmology/mythology.
Northern anthropology, material culture, ethnohistory and phenomenology.
Biological Anthropology, Osteology, Biomechanics, Evolutionary Theory, Fossil Hominins, Taxonomy, and Epistemology.
Instructor, Rural Alaska Honors Institute, UAF.
Cultural Resource Specialist; Faunal, Taphonomic, Lithic, and Stable Isotopic Analyses; Fisheries; Subarctic, Arctic, and Pacific Northwest Coast Archaeology; Excavation Methods; Multivariate Statistical Analyses; Human Behavioral Ecology; NHPA (Section 106), AHPA, and NEPA Compliance.
Fairbanks District Archaeologist, Bureau of Land Management. Historical archaeology, mining history, cultural resource management.
Indigenous cultures of Alaska, author and natural historian.
Stable isotope ecology, nutritional physiology of insects; understanding patterns of stable isotope variation among biological compounds.
Human genetics - focus on type 2 diabetes and complications, genetic epidemiology - focus on statistics and bioinformatics , genetics of behavior - focus on development of phenotypes for genetic studies, biostatistics.
Affiliate faculty; Feng Qu, the founding Director and Professor of Arctic Studies Center at Liaocheng University, China. He is also a professor in archaeology at Nanjing Normal University. He received PhD in anthropology from °Ä²Êͼ¿â. He focuses his research on Arctic prehistory and ethnography, shamanism, ritualism, and animism. He has published three monographs including An Exploration of Prehistoric Ontologies in the Bering Strait Region published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2021. He also published numerous research articles, reviews and miscellanea about circumpolar shamanism, eco-cosmologies, and prehistoric religious ideas in both Chinese and English.
Traditional Dene Place Name analysis, Lithic Analysis, Taphonomy, Subarctic and Arctic archaeology, Non-linear Complexity Modeling, Human Behavioral Ecology, Site Structure and Intersite Variability, GIS, Ichnological analysis, Photomodeling, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, NHPA (Section 106), AHPA, and NEPA Compliance
Field Office Archaeologist (retired), Bureau of Land Management. Cultural resource management, Arctic and northwest Alaska, Alaska mining history.
Northern anthropology.
Northern anthropology.
Emeritus Faculty
Charlotte Basham
Associate Professor; PhD (linguistics), University of Michigan, 1986. Discourse analysis,
second language acquisition, and contrastive rhetoric.
Phone: 907-474-6884;
Email: ffcsb @ uaf.edu
Joel D. Irish
Professor, Curator of Biological Anthropology at the UA Museum; Ph.D. (biological
anthropology), Arizona State University, 1993. Dental anthropology, paleopathology,
human osteology, human variation, bioarchaeology; Africa, Southeast Alaska.
Phone: 907-474-6755
Email: jdirish @ alaska.edu
David C. Koester
Professor; PhD, University of Chicago, 1990. Culture and history, historical and national
consciousness; anthropological study of insult and discursive manipulation of status;
early history of ethnography; energy concepts and discourse; Iceland, Russian Far
East, North Pacific, circumpolar.
Phone: 907-474-6188
Email: syamin@alaska.edu
Molly Lee
Professor, Curator of Ethnology at the UA Museum; Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley, 1992. Sociocultural anthropology, Native Alaskan, Eskimo and Inuit art of the historical and contemporary periods.
Phyllis Morrow
(Former Dean of the College of Liberal Arts), Professor; Ph.D. (social and cultural anthropology), Cornell University, 1987. Linguistic anthropology, socio-legal studies, folklore, Inuit/Yup'ik ethnography, and ritual and symbolism.
Peter P. Schweitzer
Professor; Ph.D. (anthropology), University of Vienna, 1990. Kinship, Social Organization
and Identity Politics; Global Climate Change and Northern Indigenous Communities;
Contemporary Hunting and Gathering Societies; History of Anthropological Theory; Methods
of Historical Anthropology; Siberia, Alaska, Circumpolar North.
Phone: 907-474-5015;
Email: ppschweitzer @ alaska.edu
In Memoriam
Brian Hemphill
Professor PhD, University of Oregon, 1991. Dental Morphology, Odontometrics, Dental Pathology, Skeletal Biology, Biological Distance Analysis, Bioarchaeology, Human Evolution, South Asia, Central Asia, Great Basin, Northwest Coast.
Patricia B. Kwachka
Professor; Ph.D. (linguistics), University of Florida Gainesville, 1981. Sociolinguistics, language acquisition, language shift, and medical communication. (Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts)
Staff
Jamie Bennett
Department Administrator
Department of Anthropology
BUN 405A