Current Students
Working with super smart graduate students is one of the greatest aspects of being a professor. Both current and former students (below) continue to inspire my own work and thinking about anthropology.
Christina Frasier
PhD Candidate
Dissertation Title: Placekeeping as Social Equity: Heritage and Gentrification in San Antonio, Texas
Research Interests: Urban Commercial Art, Identity, Theories of Place
KT Hanson
PhD Student (Co-Advised with Dr. Thad Bartlett)
Research focused on ethnoprimatology, primatology field schools.
Alexandra Holdbrook
PhD Candidate
Dissertation Title: Co-Producing Emergent Ecologies: A Multispecies Ethnography of Exotic Wildlife in the Texas Hill Country
Research focused on multispecies ethnography, conservation, and exotics on Texas Ranches
Averee Luhrs
PhD Candidate
Dissertation title: Connecting Conservation Network: Exploring the Role and Ideology of Accredited Zoo Conservation Through the “SAFE” Initiative
AZA Conservation Programs
Amanda Micek
PhD Student
Research focused on urban and prison gardens.
Jennifer Torpie-Sweterlitch
PhD Candidate
Dissertation title: Making the American Gorilla
Interests: Human-Animal Relations, Primatology, Science Studies
Maryellen Werlitz
MA student
Interests include disability and virtual ethnography, MMORPGs and Animal-Assisted Therapy
Former Students
PhD Advisor
DelliCarpini, Rebecca (PhD completed Spring 2021 – NSF GRFP) Feminism in the Forest: Understanding Knowledge Production and the Interplay of Identity Characteristics in Conservation
Roberts, Jason (PhD completed Spring 2019 – NSF DDIG) “We Live Like This”: Life, Logging, and the Continuing Pursuit of Development on New Hanover Island (Lavongai), Papua New Guinea.
Shaver, Marissa (PhD completed Spring 2019 – Mexico Center, Alvarez fund, Smithsonian Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology) The Making of a Fishing Pueblo: Sustaining Place in Baja California Sur, Mexico
MA Advisor
Antram, Alex (MA, Spring 2018) Degree in passing
Fitzell, Jeffrey (MA, Fall 2022) Identity, the Avatar, and Communities in Star Wars the Old Republic and Related Digital Worlds
Micek, Amanda (MA, Spring 2022) Growing Resistance: Community Gardens as Counter-Spaces
Reid, Jessica (MA, Fall 2016) A mother that protects you: Community performance, identity, and values within the contrade and Palio di Siena
Serilli, Anna (MA Summer 2022) Digital [Air &] Space: Combinging Ethnography and Photogrammetry To Understand Museum Collecting Strategies, Object Transformations, and Digital Method Implementation
Stout, Richard (MA Spring 2023) An Exploratory Study of Financial Compensation for Livestock Depredation Policies: Human and Wildlife Conflict and the Confluences of Science, Human, and Animal Relationships
Torpie-Sweterlitsch, Jennifer (MA, Fall 2014) Captive nature: Exploring the influence of zoos on visitor worldview, knowledge, and behavior
Vryn, Michelle (MA, Spring 2012) Creating Certainty in an Uncertain World: An Analysis of Voluntary Land Conservation in Texas