People

Faculty
Affiliated Faculty

Alison Wylie

Alison Wylie

Professor, Department of Philosophy | Canada Research Chair |Associate Member

phone604 822 6574
location_onBuchanan E 276
I’m a philosopher of the social and historical sciences, with particular interest in questions raised by archaeological research: How do we know what (we think) we know about the past? In particular, what counts as evidence in archaeological contexts? If values and interests play a role in all asp...Read more

Andrew Mason

Andrew Mason

Honorary Research Associate

phone604 417 4259
location_onAnSo 153
I am trained as an anthropological archaeologist and I have obtained further formal education in the areas of intangible cultural heritage, the management of heritage sites, the assessment of cultural landscapes and historic districts, built heritage rehabilitation and the assessment of site signifi...Read more

Anthony Shelton

Anthony Shelton

Professor of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory; Associate Member

location_onDorothy Somerset Studios 203
Prof. Anthony Shelton was Director of the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at the University of British Columbia from 2004 - 2021. An anthropologist, administrator, curator and teacher originally from Britain, Prof. Shelton is a leader in museology, cultural criticism, and the anthropology of art and ae...Read more

Benjamin Collins

I am an archaeologist with experience in zooarchaeology, personal adornments, Cultural Resource Management, rock shelter archaeology, and social network and connections. My research interests focus on how past foraging peoples adapted and thrived during periods of rapid climate change through exten...Read more

Bernard Perley

Bernard Perley

Director, Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies | Associate Member

Bernard C. Perley is Maliseet from Tobique First Nation, New Brunswick. He holds Bachelor of Fine Arts (studio arts) and Master of Architecture (architectural design) degrees from the University of Texas, Austin. His PhD is in Social Anthropology from Harvard. His academic training is interdisciplin...Read more

Brian Whiting

Brian Whiting

Honorary Research Associate

Dan Small

Dan Small

Honorary Research Associate

location_onAnSo 153
Dan Small is a medical anthropologist and Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. He has a PhD in medical anthropology (University of British Columbia), an MPhil in circumpolar studies (University of Cambridge), an undergraduate degree in sociology...Read more

Danya Fast

I am a medical anthropologist conducting research in Vancouver, Canada and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. My work in these settings has broadly focused on understanding the relationship between health and place among young people who use drugs in the margins of the city. I am an Assistant Professor in the...Read more

Eric Guiry

Eric Guiry

Honorary Research Associate

Fuyubi Nakamura

Fuyubi Nakamura

Curator, Asia, Museum of Anthropology | Assistant Professor, Asian Studies | Associate member

location_onMuseum of Anthropology 245G
Fuyubi Nakamura (中村冬日) is a socio-cultural anthropologist. She holds a joint position of Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian Studies and Curator, Asia at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC. She is an Associate Member in the Department of Anthropology, but does not teach in the dep...Read more

Heidi Swierenga

Heidi Swierenga

Head Conservator, Associate Member

location_onMOA

Kate Kingsbury

Dr. Kate Kingsbury, D.Phil. has lived in the UK, France, Belgium, and Senegal, moving to live permanently in Canada in 2017. More recently she spends much time in Mexico doing fieldwork. She received her B.A. in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies, and an...Read more

Lane Atmore

Lane Atmore

Honorary Research Associate

Lindsay Der

Lindsay Der

Honorary Research Associate

Luis Manuel González

Luis Manuel González

Adjunct Professor

Luis Manuel González is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Anthropology at The University of British Columbia. He is also a Research Associate in the Archaeology Centre at the University of Toronto. A licensed professional archaeologist and educator trained at Universidad Nacional Mayor de S...Read more

Mark Haden

Mark Haden

Honorary Research Associate

Martina Volfova

Martina Volfova

Honorary Research Associate

MengYang Wu

MengYang Wu

Honorary Research Associate

Nuno Porto

Nuno Porto

Curator – Africa & South America, Museum of Anthropology | Associate Member

Sonia Zarrillo

Sonia Zarrillo

Honorary Research Associate

I am an anthropological archaeologist with a specialization in paleoethnobotany - the study of the interaction between people and plants in the past. My primary region of study is the Central Andes, including adjacent tropical forest areas, with a secondary interest in North America Plains. I am ...Read more
Core Faculty

Alexia Bloch

I came to the field of anthropology following my undergraduate studies in Russian language and literature, including at Wellesley College and as a study abroad student at the Herzen Pedagogical Institute in Leningrad, U.S.S.R. In the early 1990s as a doctoral student in cultural anthropology at the ...Read more

Amirpouyan Shiva

I received my PhD in socio-cultural anthropology from the University of Minnesota in 2018. My PhD fieldwork research in the Persian blogosphere mainly examines how people change in the process of media-making and media-receiving. It addresses the questions of how, in a ubiquitously mediated world, t...Read more

Andrew Martindale

My research is intertwined with material legacies of people of and on the Pacific coast.  I've been fortunate to work in partnership with Tsimshian and Musqueam people as friends, colleagues, and teachers.  My endeavors as a result inhabit intersections of colonialism and race, of materiality and ...Read more

Camilla Speller

I am broadly trained in biological anthropology and archaeology. My BA from the University of Calgary was a double major in archaeology and biological anthropology. During my MA at Simon Fraser University, I developed skills in ancient DNA analysis, and I expanded this expertise for my PhD research ...Read more

Carole Blackburn

Legal and political anthropology, race and colonization, human rights, indigenous rights and sovereignty, First Nations and the Canadian state, injury, trauma and reconciliation.

Charles Menzies

Professor hagwil hayetsk's (Charles Menzies) primary research interests are the production of anthropological films, natural resource management (primarily fisheries related), political economy, contemporary First Nations' issues, maritime anthropology and the archaeology of north coast BC. He has c...Read more

Daisy Rosenblum

Daisy Rosenblum (PhD University of California, Santa Barbara) focuses on the multi-modal documentation and description of indigenous languages of North America, with an emphasis on methods, partnerships, and products that contribute to community-based language revitalization. She currently works wit...Read more

Darlene Weston

https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2019/05/15/Anthropology-Reconciliation/ As a biological anthropologist, human osteoarchaeologist and palaeopathologist, I study human remains from archaeological contexts, focusing on bio-cultural interpretations of health and disease. My interest in human remains was s...Read more

Elif Sari

I am a socio-cultural anthropologist interested in transnational sexualities, migration, asylum, waiting, humanitarianism, and queer and critical race theory with a specific focus on the Middle East and its diasporas as well as collaborative, multimodal, and social justice-oriented approaches to kno...Read more

Gastón Gordillo

Gastón Gordillo

Professor

phone604 822 3797
location_onAnSo 2317
Professor Gastón Gordillo was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He graduated from the University of Buenos Aires (1990) and completed his PhD at the University of Toronto (1999). He is a Guggenheim Fellow, was a visiting scholar at Harvard and Yale, a visiting professor at Cornell, and a ...Read more

Heather Robertson

My interest, Biological Anthropology, began during my Undergrad at Simon Fraser University in the Department of Archaeology. In 2005 I began working for that department as a technician and research assistant in the Archaeology Laboratories documenting ancestral remains for repatriation to the Haida,...Read more

Helena Zeweri

I was drawn to the field of Anthropology because of its ability to attend to how people navigate relations of power in everyday life. I believe in the power of ethnography to capture the nuances of people’s multi-layered experiences of systems, institutions, and policies. I completed my doctoral s...Read more

Hugh Gusterson

Hugh Gusterson (PhD, Stanford University, 1991) has a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and the Anthropology Department at UBC.  Before coming to UBC in 2020, he taught at MIT, George Mason University, George Washington University, and the Georgia Institute of Tech...Read more

Jennifer Kramer

Jennifer Kramer

Associate Professor, Museum/Sociocultural Anthropology

phone604 827 1868
location_onAnSo 2307a
I hold a joint position as cultural anthropologist in the department of anthropology and museum curator at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at UBC. I strive to be both a collaborative museologist and a critical museologist. In this way, I merge practitioner/curator and theoretician/critic as I partn...Read more

Kristen Barnett

Kristen Barnett (Unangax) is an assistant professor and Tier-2 CRC Chair in Indigenous Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Broadly trained in anthropological archaeology and Indigenous studies she received her PhD at the University of Montana (2015). ...Read more

Leslie A Robertson

Leslie A Robertson

Professor

location_on3122- 6303 N.W. Marine Drive, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z1
I have worked on a variety of academic and solutions-focused, ethnographic projects with First Nations and settler  communities in Western Canada. This work includes collaborative projects for  cultural impact assessment, food security and regional oral history initiatives. Methodologically, I'm ...Read more

Millie Creighton

Sociocultural Anthropology, Japan, Japanese descent communities (Nikkei or Nikkeijin), Korea, Inter-Asian Relations, Identity, Consumerism, Popular and Mass Culture, Gender, Minorities, Work and Leisure.

Patrick Moore

After completing degrees in anthropology, linguistics and education, I worked for many years learning First Nations languages in northern Alberta and the Yukon, teaching those languages, and developing curriculum and teaching materials. In 1994, I returned to graduate study in anthropology, working ...Read more

Sabina Magliocco

Sabina Magliocco

Lecturer, Sociocultural Anthropology | Chair, Program in Religion, Literature and the Arts

phone604 822 6798
location_onAnSo 3118
Sabina Magliocco, Ph.D. grew up in Italy and the United States. She received an AB from Brown University in 1980 and a Ph.D. from Indiana University – Bloomington in 1988. She has taught at California State University, where she served two terms as department chair, as well as the University of Ca...Read more

Shaylih Muehlmann

Shaylih Muehlmann received her PhD from the University of Toronto in 2008 and was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California Berkeley (2008-2010). She joined the anthropology department at the University of British Columbia in 2010 and was appointed the Canada Research Chair in Language,...Read more

Susan Rowley

Susan Rowley

Curator of Public Archaeology, Director of Museum of Anthropology | Associate Professor

phone604 723 0494
location_onMuseum of Anthropology 224
Susan Rowley is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and a curator at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at the University of British Columbia.  She holds a Ph.D. in archaeology from Cambridge University. She first travelled north in 1974 as a field assistant on an archaeological...Read more

Tracey Heatherington

Tracey Heatherington

She, Her, Hers

Associate Professor, Sociocultural Anthropology

phone604 822 2878
location_onAnthropology & Sociology Building
I am a Sociocultural Anthropologist interested in globalization, development and political ecology. I examine environmental concerns in the context of social justice, using case studies to explore the evolving global imaginaries that beckon us to define environmental problems like biodiversity conse...Read more

Vinay Kamat

I trained as a medical anthropologist with specialization in global health, first at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and then at Emory University, Atlanta, from where I received my Ph.D. in Anthropology. Before that, I trained as a professional social worker and received my Ph.D. in Social Work f...Read more

Wade Davis

Biography Wade Davis is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker whose work has taken him from the Amazon to Tibet, Africa to Australia, Polynesia to the Arctic. Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society from 2000 to 2013, he is currently Professor of Anthropology and the BC Leadersh...Read more

Zahra Hayat

Zahra Hayat

Assistant Professor

I am Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. I study pharmaceutical capitalism, intellectual property, and law. I am trained as an anthropologist and lawyer, and work at the intersection of medical anthropology and law. From 2024-26, I will be a Harvard ...Read more

Zhichun Jing

Dr. Jing’s areas of interest include the archaeology of Shang civilization, early urbanism, culture contact, environmental archaeology, the archaeology of collapse and sustainability, archaic jades, and archaeological ceramics. He has conducted fieldwork in China, Greece, and the United States. Hi...Read more
Emeriti

Brian Chisholm

Brian Chisholm

Senior Instructor Emeritus

Ph.D., Simon Fraser University, 1987  

Bruce Miller

Bruce Miller

Professor, Sociocultural Anthropology | Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) Fellow

phone604 822 6336
location_onAnSo 2125
I have been a professor at UBC since 1990. My research concerns Indigenous peoples and their relations with the state in its various local, national, and international manifestations. In recent years my work has particularly overlapped with colleagues in archaeology and in law. Much of my ethnogr...Read more

Carol Mayer

Carol Mayer

Associate Member, Emeritus

Head of the curatorial department at MOA, with particular responsibility for the Pacific and African collections, and the European and Canadian ceramics collections. Regional interests include Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Fiji, New Zealand and British Columbia. Sometimes teaches Museum related courses...Read more

David Pokotylo

David Pokotylo

Associate Professor Emeritus

phone604 822 2594
location_onAnSo 2107
I am an anthropological archaeologist whose research and teaching expertise has focused on the archaeology of hunter-gatherer-foragers, lithic technology, public archaeology, archaeological heritage management, and the use of quantitative methods in archaeology. I pursue research on public opinio...Read more

Elvi Whittaker

Elvi Whittaker

Professor Emerita

John Barker

John Barker (PhD, British Columbia, 1985) is a socio-cultural anthropologist whose main research concerns the religious change among Indigenous peoples in colonial and post-colonial Oceania and British Columbia and the history of anthropological research in Canada. After receiving degrees at the Uni...Read more

Julie Cruikshank

Julie Cruikshank

Professor Emeritus

Ph.D. University of British Columbia, 1987

Michael Blake

I joined the faculty at UBC in 1986, a year after completing my Ph.D. in Anthropology, with a specialization in Archaeology, at the University of Michigan. My doctoral research in the early 1980s examined the household archaeology of the Postclassic period Maya centre of Canajasté on the Lagartero...Read more

Patricia Shaw

Patricia A. Shaw is the Founding Chair (1996-2014) of the First Nations Languages Program at University of British Columbia, and Professor of Anthropological Linguistics with particular interests in sound systems; the interface of phonology with phonetics and morphology; literacy and oral traditions...Read more

R.G. Matson

R.G. Matson

Professor Emeritus

Robin Ridington

Robin Ridington

Professor Emeritus

phone808 874 9045

William McKellin

William McKellin

Assistant Professor | Associate Chair, UBC Behaviourial Research Ethics Board

phone604 822 2756
location_onAnSo 3123
Medical anthropology: impact of genetic testing on families and clinicians; disability; qualitative health research. Sociolinguistics: cultural and cognitive models; interpretation of metaphors.
Postdoctoral Fellows
Sessional Instructors

Ana Vivaldi

I am an instructor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology teaching in the areas of: Politics of Race and Indigeneity, Gender and transfeminism, Social Theory and Multimodal Ethnographic Methods. My research is based at the School of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester, where I h...Read more

David Ryniker

David Ryniker

Continuing Sessional

location_onANSO 149
Ph.D. UBC, 2001

Rafael Wainer

Rafael Wainer

Continuing Sessional

location_onANSO 157
Rafael has a Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology from UBC specializing in children's cancer experience throughout treatment. He works with health care providers, children and families in Argentina. He is interested in questions of subjectivity, capacity for action, the body, social care, and the limits t...Read more