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.
KT Hanson
PhD Candidate (Co-Advised with Dr. Thad Bartlett) (Wenner Gren 2024, NSF DDRIG 2024)
(Defense anticipated in 2025/26)
Dissertation entitled: “The Primates Themselves:” Ethics, Praxis and Becoming in Primate Field Schools”
Research focused on ethnoprimatology, primatology field schools.
Alexandra Holdbrook
PhD Candidate (Wenner Gren 2024)
(Defense anticipated in 2025/26)
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 (DDRIG NSF 2025)
Dissertation title: Connecting Conservation Network: Exploring the Role and Ideology of Accredited Zoo Conservation Through the “SAFE” Initiative
AZA Conservation Programs
Amanda Micek
PhD Candidate (Defense anticipated in 2025/26)
Dissertation Title: Growing Behind and Beyond Bars: Prison Gardens and Green Jobs Programs
Research focused on urban and prison gardens.
Bright Yeboah
PhD Candidate (Co-advised with Eva Wikberg)
(NSF DDRIG)
Dissertation Title: Social network analysis of human and non-human primate interactions at the Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary in Central Ghana.
Research focused on Primate Conservation.
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
Frasier, Christina (PhD completed Spring 2025) Placekeeping as Social Equity: Gentrification and Heritage in San Antonio, Texas
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
Torpie-Sweterlitsch, Jennifer (PhD completed Spring 2024) Making the American Gorilla: Exploring the Production of Endangered Species and Conservation in America
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
Werlitz, MaryEllen (MA Spring 2024) non-thesis option