Honors Student Profiles

2025

Therese Cerdan

Major: Anthropology

Thesis: Local Implications and Imperial Ventures: U-M Archaeology in the Philippines' Central Visayas Region

Summary: In this increasingly decolonial world, many Western museums have had to reevaluate the harm their collecting practices have done as a result of colonialism. The University of Michigan has held a contentious connection with the Philippines since its first expeditions in the late 19th century, especially within the context of U.S. imperialism. In the 20th century, two major U-M archaeological projects occurred in the Central Visayas, a region distinguished by its deep colonial history and diverse foreign influences. These expeditions were led by Carl Guthe in the 1920s and Karl Hutterer in the 1980s, both of whom were equally guided by the theoretical and political circumstances of their times. My research sought to contextualize the Guthe collection by highlighting work done by the various local Filipino agents and communities employed by the expedition. Likewise, a look into Hutterer’s methods of engagement with local peoples sheds light on the changing attitudes of the field of archaeology during that time. By positioning the Guthe and Hutterer Philippine expeditions in their respective times and spaces, I explore the archaeological researchers’ roles and their research’s impact on communities of origin in the Central Visayas region of the Philippines. All of these circumstances continue to shape perceptions of Filipino heritage and identity today, demonstrating the immense importance of collaboration and community-led initiatives in archaeological fieldwork today.

Future Plans: I will be applying to Master's programs to continue my career in museums.

India Pruette

Major: Anthropological Archaeology

Thesis: The Herd Mentality: A Zooarchaeological Analysis of Animal Care in the Bronze Age Southern Levant

Summary: Questions surrounding how domesticated animals fared in the face of urbanization and potential economic specialization have been little explored along the Northern Negev, a region on the outskirts of the larger Levantine urban phenomenon. In the Early Bronze Age, new urban and economic development greatly changed subsistence strategies, particularly the distribution of animal products. In order to understand how human-animal relationships and herding strategies changed during this transition, this study identified pathologies in a legacy faunal collection as well as recently excavated material. This data was used as a proxy to ascertain overall animal well-being and health, which can reflect care, herding techniques, and subsistence strategies at these early urban sites. Ultimately, this thesis used the framework of direct vs. indirect models of animal product distribution to learn more about herding. The case study sites for this analysis, Tell el-Hesi and Lahav, are tell sites in the southern Levant on the edge of the Negev Desert. During the Early Bronze Age III (2900-2500 B.C.E.), they were both fortified, urban locales, and their marginality and remoteness makes their changing subsistence practices ideal for the study of how herd management changed with urban and economic development. This preliminary analysis, focused on exploring animal health and evidence for care of domesticates, found that an increase in presence of pathologies at Lahav indicated a transition from a direct to an indirect meat distribution model, while Tell el-Hesi’s limited presence of pathologies suggested a consistent direct distribution model. More broadly, this project’s findings highlights the potential in studying animal care techniques through paleopathology.

Future Plans: This fall, I will be joining the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Berkeley to complete a PhD in archaeology, focused on faunal remains.

Carly Salazar

Major: Anthropology (Archeaology)

Thesis: Call Back To Moana Nui: Museum Research for Pacific Islander Ancestors at The University of Michigan

Summary: In this thesis three Pacific Islander skulls donated to the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology were analyzed through non-metric methods to reconcile questionable documentation and provenance information. Due to limited provenance information within the museum record, the study focuses on the visual, cultural, and osteological analysis of each skull to understand specific cultural practices unique to communities and islands each skull has been removed from. Visual analysis of iconographic designs, stylistic elements, and cultural practice methods reveal inconsistencies in the museum documentation and spark discussion on possible interpretations. One suggestion discussed in this thesis is the conflation of cultural goods and human remains made specifically for commerce, and the difficulties that arise in provenance research and repatriation when considering human remains that were not used for ancestral worship or cultural purposes when setting the groundwork for repatriation.

Future Plans: Pursing a PhD in Anthropological Archaeology at the University of Washington-Seattle.

Addison Yerks

Major: Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Environment, and Anthropology

Thesis: The World is Your Oyster: Reimagined Relations in Precarious Conditions

Summary: Across Cape Cod, I traveled alongside scientists, sampling water and speaking with residents about regional water quality issues. Drawing on participant observation and semi-structured interviews, this thesis explores how labor and care emerge as central forces shaping relationships between humans and nature. The American lawn, framed as a necessity of the suburban landscape, plays a prominent role in water contamination. Rooted in cultural ideologies of home and wilderness, the lawn provides a transition from public to private space: from the street to the single-family home. The appearance of this space is regulated and reinforced by the lawn care industry, alienating the labor between the homeowner and the lawn by marketing lawn care as a necessity. The number of lawns is increasing alongside further development of single-family homes, which often counteract water protection mandates. Residents speak to the fact that development-friendly towns are prioritizing financial incentive over their wellbeing, and that of their non-human counterparts, especially their water. Industrial practices such as lawn fertilizer application and single-family home infrastructure introduce excess nutrients into groundwater and nearby ponds, creating long-term consequences. Though often invisible, these behaviors reflect a broader socioeconomic system where aesthetic and social value is prioritized over environmental health. Given these precarious conditions, collaborations between scientists and local shellfish farmers are practicing innovative remediation strategies to improve local water quality. The Eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica), a native and endangered species, provides promise. As filter feeders, oysters actively remove nutrients from the water and improve the functioning of their environment. Given regional reductions in wild oyster populations due to commercial overfishing, human labor is required to reintroduce them into ponds. While a functional remediation strategy, I argue that oysters are ultimately a reciprocal practice of care that challenges environmentally harmful ideas of progress. By contrasting the alienation of labor in lawn care with the intentional, embodied labor required for oyster remediation, I reveal how cultural ideologies, economic pressures, and environmental needs intersect in shaping the future of water on Cape Cod.

2023

Skylar Brodnan

Major: Evolutionary Anthropology

Thesis: Origins of Human Culture: Individual Variation and Social Influence in Wild Chimpanzee Tool Use

Summary: Prior to the mid-1900s, researchers thought that tool use was unique to humans. However, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) habitually use a variety of tools in the wild and exhibit potential cultural behaviors. To understand the roots of individual variation in tool use, this study examines 25 years of observational data among wild chimpanzees from the Kanyawara community at Kibale National Park, Uganda. I examined the effects of age and sex on six forms of tool use and object manipulation. The results of this study indicate age and sex differences for many forms of tool use. Specifically, females engaged in extractive foraging more than males, and extractive foraging increased for females with age. Females engaged in object play more than males, and the behavior decreased with age, while leaf cleaning and aggressive tool use occurred significantly more in males than females and increased with age. I also tested the effects of age and sex on three metrics of social influence, examining which age and sex class of tool users were more likely to be looked at, approached, or have their tool touched. This analysis showed that older tool users are more likely to influence other group members than younger tool users. Finally, I explored the hypothesis that there are ‘impact tool users’ (in a similar sense to chimpanzee ‘impact hunters’), a topic that has not previously been explored. We found four females whose presence and tool use increased the probability of tool use at drinking events, indicative of proposed ‘impact tool users’ within the community, shedding light on transmission of knowledge in chimpanzees.

Future Plans: I am currently working as a lab manager in the Psychology department at the University of Michigan. I will be applying to Ph.D. programs next fall.

Caitlin Hoyng

Major: Anthropology

Thesis: Night Sweats as Pillow Talk: Community Care for Sex Workers, Queer People, and Noncitizens in 1980s-1990s Berlin, AIDS, and a Little Bit of Context. A Multimodal and Oral History.

Summary: In 1980s East Berlin, many sex workers, queer people, and noncitizens lived an uneasy existence under Stasi surveillance, or between “double lives.” Sex workers, who serviced international clientele and converted currency on the black market, lived in constant danger of exposing themselves and their work to the GDR; though, according to the state, sex workers didn’t (or rather, shouldn’t) exist in East Germany to begin with. Those who did exist sometimes became valuable informants on Western and Eastern clients alike for the Stasi. Queer communities in East Berlin lived with more leeway to move freely throughout normal society, but under one main presumption: Don’t talk about your sexuality if you’d like to keep doing so. Many gay men entered heterosexual marriages for safety—a protective factor once HIV/AIDS entered Germany. Noncitizens were alternatively barred from employment and recruited as guest workers, but without the freedom to bring their family, too. For them, testing positive for HIV constituted deportation. In the West, noncitizens came to a place that deemed itself “not an immigration country” (Stokes 2022), and fought back against human rights violations in political struggles following Reunification.During the epidemic, these communities faced the additional dangers of living at a time when the nature of their stigmatized work and identities put them at higher risk for becoming sick, yet put them further under the spotlight for surveillance or stigma. In the West, infection rates for HIV were much higher, meaning that mutual aid efforts were more pressing. Post-Reunification, former Easterners involved in HIV/AIDS activism sought to incorporate the viewpoints of queer socialists (who felt the GDR “obscured the ultimate wisdom” of their policies with extensive surveillance [Schatz 2020]) into mutual aid efforts—stigma against the East, however, meant that these attempts were not always successful. Using background research on German history, anthropological theory, and ethnographic interviews with Berlin’s elder sex workers, queer communities, and noncitizens, this thesis will create an oral history on how everyday people figure out what care means to them. My analysis focuses on surveillance, mutual aid, art, and memories, and could be described as an exploratory gathering of voices, going back and forth between locations.

Future Plans: I'm currently working as a DEI researcher and student advisor for the Biology department at UMich, where I'm doing an interview project with alumni on post-graduate pathways and barriers to education. I work part-time as a children's art camp counselor, too, and I'm applying to PhD programs this fall.

Krystal Koski

Major: Evolutionary Anthropology & Linguistics

Thesis: A New Window into Landscape Heterogeneity via a Combination of Sedimentary Facies Analysis and Isotopic Evidence

Summary: Landscape heterogeneity has long been proposed as a key factor influencing hominin evolution, but the nature of environmental variation within specific regions is understudied. The Koobi Fora Formation in the Turkana Basin, northern Kenya, encompasses an important period of hominin evolution ca. 2.0-1.4 Ma that is characterized by high hominin diversity and landscape heterogeneity, making it an ideal scenario to study the relationship between landscape heterogeneity and hominin evolution. In addition, the period from 2.0-1.4 Ma has been identified as a period of C4 biomass expansion and heightened aridity, although the timing of these events varied spatially across the basin. To attempt to understand the ways in which these events manifested across the landscape, previously published enamel δ13C and δ18O values of large mammals were compiled and categorized based on their depositional context. Linear models were used to examine the relationship between depositional context and enamel isotope values through time, with the goal of understanding how heterogeneity was represented on the landscape and determining where in space the C4 resource expansion and aridity onset initially began and became distributed. Results here indicate that C4 resources did not proliferate in a single depositional context; rather, heterogeneous vegetation within landscape components (depositional settings) played a crucial role in maintaining diversity in mammalian communities. My findings also suggest the expansion of C4 resources and the aridity onset were not necessarily coupled events, but do support gradual aridification of the region during this interval. These analyses provide a useful framework for generating more robust paleoenvironmental reconstructions that provide unique windows into the nature of habitat heterogeneity characteristic of hominin habitats.

Future Plans: This summer I will be working as a Camp Counselor for the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History while I apply to Ph.D. programs.

2021

Macy Afsari

Thesis: The Nuance of Vaccine Decision-Making: Examining the In-Between

Summary: I conducted an ethnographic investigation of the logic of decision-making for individuals who fall into the category of vaccine hesitant, self-described “middle-of-the-roaders.” Through ethnographic interviews, I investigate the multi-faceted opinions and decisions about vaccines for individuals living in the current risk society, especially in regards to COVID-19. This project seeks to understand how vaccine-hesitant patients gather biomedical knowledge and interpret the information to make their vaccination decisions.

Future Plans: After graduating, I will apply to medical school to begin in the fall of 2022, and will work as an emergency department medical scribe in my gap year. I look forward to learning about complex medical issues and engage in shared decision-making with my future patients taking an anthropological approach to caring for the health of others.

2019

Rachael Bittick

Sociocultural Anthropology

Thesis: Experimenting with Normative Social Behavior: A Study of Space, Communication, and Performance in Club Culture

Summary: My project looks at the ways in which we construct and perceive social spaces as outlets for experimentation with normative behaviors. In a parallel structure, I critically analyze foundational theories discussed by influential academics such as Edward T. Hall, Gregory Bateson, Irving Goffman, and Judith Butler, to name a few, in order to then apply those theories to my observations from club culture and interviews with frequent club attendees. By cross-referencing my theoretical and ethnographic data, I explore the social implications of such experimental spaces.

Future Plans: I am currently working for the University of Michigan's Office of New Student Programs as an Orientation Leader for the incoming freshman class of 2023. In the Fall, I will be working as a Campus Representative for College Year in Athens, the study abroad program I participated in my Junior year. I will travel across the US to various college and university campuses to act as a liaison between the program administration and prospective students. Beyond that, I will be pursuing a masters degree in Higher Education, most likely in the field of student affairs.

Caroline Richburg

Sociocultural Anthropology

Thesis: Laboring to Conceive: The Sociomaterial Making of a Queer Mother

Summary: My thesis project studied queer women who pursue motherhood through reproductive technologies. More specifically, my goal was to shed light on the complex negotiations that queer women make in their journeys to conceive and mother. I argue that queer motherhood is not about achieving a heteronormative ideal or capitalizing on technological advancements, but rather about laboriously aligning a particular set of conditions such that a certain reality—motherhood—may come into being. Among these conditions are biological manipulations via reproductive technologies, legal rulings made possible through marriage equality, adoption laws which remain vastly unequal and fragmented nationally, social movements that accept (or reject) queer families, and the reality that negotiating each of these categories individually and in relation to one another requires an astounding amount of money and educational savvy.

Future Plans: In July 2019, I will begin medical school at the University of Michigan School of Medicine. I am looking forward to learning more about women’s health and social medicine while pursuing my medical degree, and hope to continue engaging with these themes as a future-physician.

2018

Rachel Hurwitz

Biological Anthropology

Thesis: Effects of GnRH Agonist Treatment on Transgender Adolescent Bone Health and Maturation studied via a Mouse Model

Summary: My thesis looked at a type of drug colloquially termed a "puberty blocker," which is frequently used by transgender adolescents to delay the onset of puberty and lessen feelings of gender dysphoria and make potential future surgeries less invasive. This drug is frequently used in adults with reproductive disorders as well, wherein it is known to cause detrimental losses to bone, but it has not been studied for similar effects in adolescents. Because transgender healthcare is such an important and underrepresented field of medicine, I wanted to try to add to this growing area of research, by conducting a pilot study using a frequently used model organism, the laboratory mouse.

Future Plans: I am currently working for a clinical research project called the MIPACT study for Michigan Medicine during my gap years. My plans thereafter are not yet finalized, but I hope to either apply to medical school or graduate school and hope to continue being involved in anthropology and research regardless of which path I choose.

Megan Knittel

Sociocultural Anthropology

Thesis: More Than Skin Deep: Playing Gender in the Social Worlds of Overwatch

Summary: My project centered on examining experiences related to gender in the online, multiplayer video game Overwatch. Overwatch is unique amongst virtual worlds due to its design, including compulsory teamwork, and the extensive pop culture presence and fan communities surrounding the game. Through dozens of hours of gameplay and deep analysis of forums, blogs, and news related to Overwatch, I concluded that gender becomes a symbolic marker of ability in the game. When players present as masculine or feminine, player expectations about their ability and skill vary based on these gender assumptions. Overwatch’s misogynistic design choices interact with the biases and behavior of its players to create a space in which female energy is degraded and commodified. Female players persist in the world of Overwatch by connecting with other women players, and due to their enjoyment of the game despite these challenges surrounding gender.

Future Plans: I will be pursuing my doctorate in Information & Media at Michigan State University beginning Fall 2018. In the program I plan to continue researching digital worlds, fandom cultures, identity in the media, and related topics.

Danielle Leander

Biological Anthropology

Thesis: Factors Affecting the Visibility of Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) at the Detroit Zoo

Summary: The goal of my research project was to determine how visible on average the chimpanzees are during visitor hours (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) at the Detroit Zoo. I also used additional data to determine whether or not factors such as temperature and number of visitors at the chimp exhibit have an impact on the visibility of the chimps. I discovered that the chimps are visible the majority of zoo visitor hours, and that temperature and number of zoo visitors does not impact their visibility. This project was enlightening for my undergraduate career and I am grateful for the opportunity from the staff at the Detroit Zoo for allowing me to spend my time observing the chimps, and Dr. Mitani's support throughout the entire project. I highly encourage undergraduates outside and within the Anthropology department to pursue an honors project or even just undergraduate research experience!

Future Plans: I will be taking a gap year before pursuing a PhD in biomedical sciences. During this time I will be working as a research technician for The Center for Research in Critical Care at the University of Michigan exploring different approaches for Emergency Medicine.

Franny Melampy

Biological Anthropology

Thesis: Taxonomic, Geographic, and Temporal Biases in Primate Assessments on the IUCN Red List

Summary: My research focused on the largest database for categorizing threatened and non-threatened species of the world. My study questions were used to find out which factors play into the severity of primate threat statuses. By collecting information from the Red List pages of all listed primate species, I found that the statuses of these primates were dependent on the amount of information, location, and temporal variation of their assessment pages.

Future Plans: I am currently working at Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum, and I hope to pursue a career in environmental education.

Andrew Mitchel

Sociocultural Anthropology

Thesis: La Comida Latinoamericana: Food, Friction and Selfhood among Latinos in New York City

Summary: My thesis was a full survey and examination of the conception of authenticity when it comes to how Latinos in New York City discuss food and food practices. I completed 14 interviews with participants who have ancestry in a number of Latin American countries and whom all live/work/grew up within New York City. I concluded that there exists a general consensus that what is authentic, one which is learned and passed down through culinary experts within the community. These experts ensure traditions passed to the new generation, the children of my interviewees. There was disagreement about what was pure when it came to cuisine: depending on who I spoke to, there were different notions of what food/ingredients were in a pure state, and which were not. Various tensions, which I refer to as frictions, arose for different interviewees around different parts of life which impact their relationship with food from their country of origin. Finally, all my interviewees commented on the melting pot ideal of New York City, saying that if efforts are taken, it is an easy place to find, eat and make foods from one’s country of origin.

Future Plans: I will be attending UCLA for the next two years for a Master’s degree in Latin American Studies through the International Institute, where I will endeavor to continue to complete ethnography, this time in Southern California but also with Latinos from Mexicoand/or Central America.

Sarah Ridzy

Sociocultural Anthropology

Thesis: Unplanned: An Ethnographic Memoir of Pregnancy, Self, and Culture

Summary: My thesis is an ethnographic memoir recounting my own experience through an unplanned and unpartnered pregnancy. Each chapter begins with a brief personal narrative, followed by an analytic discussion of the anthropological themes and theories visible in these anecdotes. Chapter to chapter, the story follows the arc of a childbearing experience: from the initial discovery of a pregnancy, through birth, and to the establishment of a breastfeeding relationship. The main social scientific threads of this text are: pregnancy and birth as highly social rites of passage; the influence of authoritative biomedical knowledge on personal experience; the technical and symbolic roles of technology in American reproductive culture; and the negotiation between maternal sensorial input and biomedical control in the process of birth. A goal of this discussion is to illustrate the power of the personal narrative as a point of entry into the inquiry of a complex sociocultural system.

Future Plans: My plans after graduation are to pursue my master’s degree in social work at the UM School of Social Work, where I will concentrate on integrated health and interpersonal practice. I hope to gain experience as a social worker in a hospital obstetric setting and NICU before continuing to a doctorate program in anthropology.

2016

Katarina Alajbegovic

Sociocultural Anthropology

Thesis: Welcome to the Big Land: Experiences of Land, Power, and Identity through Land Claims in Labrador

Summary: Through surveys and Skype interviews I sought to understand how comprehensive land claims, or CLCs, have shaped both Indigenous and non-Indigenous individual's experiences around issues of land, power, and identity in Labrador. Through my research I found that the individuals in Labrador grappled with conflicts around understandings of land, the effects of power imbalances, as well as the tension surrounding the birth of a political Indigenous identity, all of which were related to the land claims process.

Future Plans: I was recently accepted as an AmeriCorps volunteer to work with the National Health Corps in Chicago at a family planning center where I will create educational materials and programs for high school students about topics such as contraception and safe sex.

Anna Forringer-Beal

Sociocultural Anthropology

Thesis: (In)Visible Genders: How Central American Migrant Women Navigate Control and Vulnerability

Summary: This thesis is based off of interviews conducted with Central American women from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador mainly in Pakal-Na, Chiapas, who were migrating north through Mexico. As a part of the Undocumented Migration Project, a research group focused on applying a four-field approach to understanding undocumented migration, I was interested in learning from women how gender effects their migration experience. Combining interview analysis with feminist ethnography, I conclude that women employ a variety of survival strategies that tactfully use the perceived vulnerability inherently ascribed to women in order to access goods and services otherwise unavailable to them.

Brianna Mayer

Anthropological Archaeology

Thesis: Status and Identity on a Smallholder Caribbean Plantation: An Archaeological Perspective

Summary: Through my thesis project I analyzed artifacts from two occupations on a small plantation in the British Virgin Islands, to understand the social and economic status differences and negotiation of identity between its inhabitants.

Future Plans: Following graduation, I will be taking a gap year to work in Ann Arbor and to volunteer in Detroit through the ARSP Growing Together Detroit program. I am also currently applying to graduate programs in historical archaeology.

Alexandra Newton

Sociocultural Anthropology

Thesis: Of Hustlers and Housekeepers: Private Security Work in Bucharest, Romania.

Summary: My thesis explores the private security industry in Bucharest, Romania. Through fieldwork conducted amongst the city's many private security guards, I show how post-socialist transformations and global changes in security apparatuses take on local manifestations in Bucharest. Through the seemingly oppositional figures of the "hustler" and the "housekeeper," I elucidate the dual nature of security work. While, in popular discourse and in their own imaginations, security guards identify as hyper-masculine urban gangsters, the daily realities of security work situate guards as benevolent housekeepers, whose daily practices and obligations come to produce a quotidian social order in the city. This juxtaposition, between the hustler and the housekeeper, also helps to elucidate the complex ways in which masculine subjectivities are reformulated in the face of post-socialist experiences of marginalization, dispossession and discontent. Ultimately, I argue that guards' daily practices come to introduce a new regime of security in the city—one predicated not upon coercion or force, but rather, upon connectedness and care.

Alexandra received the Virginia L. Voss Memorial Award for excellence in writing by senior Honors women.

Amber Young

Sociocultural Anthropology

Thesis: Caregiving and Commitment: Stories of Finding Value Through Raising a Child with a Disability

Summary: For my thesis, I focused on parents’ narratives of what it means to be a caregiver while raising a child with a disability. After having a job teaching kids with disabilities how to ride bikes, I interviewed some of these parents to hear their stories. My thesis focused on three of these stories in-depth to share what defined their experiences and how they found meaning.

Future Plans: Next year while taking a gap year before medical school, I will be a part of Match Corps in Boston, an Americorps program where I will be a tutor in 5th grade classrooms.

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Honors Student Profiles

2025

2023

2021

2019

Rachael Bittick

Sociocultural Anthropology

Caroline Richburg

Sociocultural Anthropology

2018

Rachel Hurwitz

Biological Anthropology

Megan Knittel

Sociocultural Anthropology

Danielle Leander

Biological Anthropology

Franny Melampy

Biological Anthropology

Andrew Mitchel

Sociocultural Anthropology

Sarah Ridzy

Sociocultural Anthropology

2016

Katarina Alajbegovic

Sociocultural Anthropology

Anna Forringer-Beal

Sociocultural Anthropology

Brianna Mayer

Anthropological Archaeology

Alexandra Newton

Sociocultural Anthropology

Amber Young

Sociocultural Anthropology