Alumni: Dissertations and Placements

Oana Mateescu, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisors: Matthew Hull, Web Keane, and Katherine Verdery
Dissertation: Serial Anachronism: Re-Assembling Romanian Forest Commons

Shana Melnysyn, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor:  Nancy Rose Hunt
Dissertation: Vagabonds, Carriers, Spirits, and Chiefs: Conflict and Mediation in Portuguese Angola, 1880-1910

Tasha Rijke-Epstein, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisors: Gabrielle Hecht and Gillian Feeley-Harnik
Dissertation: Architectures of Belonging: Moral Economies of Urban Place-Making in Mahajanga, Madagascar
Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt University 

Amir Syed, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Rudolph (Butch) Ware,III
Dissertation: Al-ḤājjʿUmar Tāl and the Realm of the Written: Mastery, Mobility and Islamic Authority in 19th Century West Africa
Assistant Professor, History, University of Virginia

Luciana Nemtanu, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Alaina Lemon
Dissertation: Weaving and Unraveling the Factory Town: Social Alterations and European Belonging in the Aftermath of Romanian Industrial Collapse, 1950-2015
Director of Student Experience, LSA Opportunity Hub, University of Michigan

Ismail Alatas, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Webb Keane
Dissertation: Aligning the Sunna and the Jama'a: Religious Authority and Islamic Social Formation in Contemporary Central Java, Indonesia
Assistant Professor, Middle Eastern Studies, New York University

Adriana Chira, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisors: Rebecca Scott and Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof
Dissertation: The Uneasy Intimacies: Race, Family, and Property in Santiago de Cuba, 1803-1868
Assistant Professor, History, Emory University

Joshua Coene, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Matthew Lassiter
Dissertation: The Contentious Prison: From Rehabilitation to Incapacitation in New South Wales and Pennsylvania, 1965-1990

Robyn d'Avignon, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Gabrielle Hecht
Dissertation: Making Artisanal Miners: Nature, Knowledge, and Subterranean History in Senegal
Assistant Professor, New York University

Shana Melnysyn, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Nancy Rose Hunt
Dissertation: Vagabonds, Carriers, Spirits, and Chiefs: Conflict and Mediation in Portuguese Angola, 1880-1910
Grants Officer, University of California Humanities Research Institute, Orange County

Joseph Viscomi, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisors: Dario Gaggio and Andrew Shryock
Dissertation: Out of Time: History, Presence, and the Departure of the Italians of Egypt, 1933-Present
Lecturer in modern European history, Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London

Christopher Estrada, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisors: Sueann Caulfield & Stuart Kirsch
Dissertation: Caboclos of Nazareth: Improvisation and Renovation in Maracatu de Baque Solto of PernambucoVisiting
Research Associate, King's College London

Bertrand Metton, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Ronald Suny
Dissertation: From the Popular Front to the Eastern Front: Youth Movements, Travel, and Fascism in France (1930-1945)
Lecturer, City University of New York-Queens

Davide Orsini, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisors: Gabrielle Hecht & Stuart Kirsch
Dissertation: Life in the Nuclear Archipelago: Cold War Technopolitics and US Nuclear Submarines in Italy
Assistant Professor, Mississippi State University

Ali Sipahi, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Andrew Shryock
Dissertation: At Arm’s Length: Historical Ethnography of Proximity in Harput
Assistant Professor, Ozyegin University, Istanbul, Turkey

Edgar Taylor, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Derek Peterson
Dissertation: Asians and Africans in Ugandan Urban Life, 1959-1972
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg South Africa

Andrea Wright, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisors: Matthew Hull & Farina Mir
Dissertation: Migratory Pipelines: Labor and Oil in the Arabian Sea   **Winner of the 2015 AGAPS Dissertation Award from the Association of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies
Assistant Professor, William and Mary College

Daniel Birchok, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Webb Keane
Dissertation: Sojourning on Mecca’s Porch: Place, Temporality and Islamic Practice in an Indonesian Province
Assistant Professor, University of Michigan-Flint

Federico Helfgott, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisors: Stuart Kirsch & Bruce Mannheim
Dissertation: Transformations in Labor, Land and Community: Mining and Society in Pasco, Peru, 20th Century to the Present
Lecturer, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, Peru; Lecturer, Universidad Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, Lima, Peru

Purvi Mehta, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Farina Mir
Dissertation: Recasting Caste: Histories of Dalit Transnationalism and the Interationalization of Caste Discrimination
Assistant Professor, Colorado College

Esteban Rozo Pabon, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Stuart Kirsch
Dissertation: Remaking Indigeneity: Conversion and Colonization in Northwest Amazonia
Assistant Professor, Universidad del Rosario, Bogota, Colombia

Ian Stewart, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisors: Kelly Askew & Paul C. Johnson
Dissertation: The Tenacity of Bondage: An Anthropological History of Slavery and Unfree Labor in Sierra Leone
Postdoc & Teaching Fellow, University of British Columbia

Dong Ju Kim, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Gillian Feeley-Harnik
Dissertation: Taking Better Care of the Fields: Knowledge Politics of Sugar Beet, Soil, and Agriculture after Socialism in Western Poland
Assistant Professor, Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, South Korea

Stephen Sparks, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Gabrielle Hecht
Dissertation: Apartheid Modern: South Africa’s Oil from Coal Project and the History of a Company Town
Lecturer, University of Johannesburg, South Africa

Danna Agmon, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisors: Diane Owen Hughes & Sumathi Ramaswamy
Dissertation: An Uneasy Alliance: Traders, Missionaries, and Tamil Intermediaries in Eighteenth-Century French India
Assistant Professor, History Department and ASPECT (Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought), Virginia Tech

Andrew Conroe, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Webb Keane
Dissertation: Generating History: Violence and the Risks of Remembering for Families of Former Political Prisoners in Post-New Order Indonesia
Assistant Professor, Sociology / Writing and Critical Thinking, National University of Singapore

Janam Mukherjee, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Barbara Metcalf
Dissertation: Hungry Bengal; War, Famine, Riots, and the End of Empire, 1939-1946
Assistant Professor, Ryerson University, Toronto

Heloise Finch-Boyer, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: David W. Cohen
Dissertation: We could have had a revolution!: “creolizing” French citizenship and social rights in La Reunion, a French Overseas Department 1946-2009
Senior Grants Specialist, Leyton UK

Emanuela Grama, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisors: Gillian Feeley-Harnik & Katherine Verdery
Dissertation: Searching for Heritage, Building Politics: Architecture, Archaeology, and Representations of the Past in Romania (1947-2007)
Assistant Professor, Carnegie Mellon University

Sergio Huarcaya, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisors: Fernando Coronil & Bruce Mannheim
Dissertation: Othering National Identity Alterity and Indigenous Activism in Otavolo, Ecuador
PostDoctoral Researcher, University of London, Royal Holloway

Robert Chidester, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Henry Wright
Dissertation: Class, Community, and Materiality in a Blue-Collar Baltimore Neighborhood: An Archaeology of Hampden-Woodberry
Manager, The Mannik & Smith Group, Inc

Sonja Luehrmann, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Alaina Lemon
Dissertation: Forms and Methods: Teaching Atheism and Religion in the Mari Republic, Russian Federation
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Simon Fraser University

Monica Patterson, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: David W. Cohen
Dissertation: Constructions of Childhood in Apartheid's Last Decades
Assistant Professor, Carleton University, Canada

Christian Williams, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: David W. Cohen
Dissertation: Exile History: An Ethnography of the SWAPO Camps and the Namibian Nation
Senior Lecturer, University of the Free State, South Africa

Sarah Arvey, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Rebecca Scott
Dissertation: Labyrinths of Love: Sexual Propriety, Family, and Social Reform in the Second Cuban Republic, 1933-1958
Program Director, Livingstrong Foundation

Chandra Bhimull, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Sonya Rose
Dissertation: Empire in the Air: Speed, Perception, and Airline Travel in the Atlantic World
Assistant Professor, Colby College

Caroline Jeannerat, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: David W. Cohen
Dissertation: An Ethnography of Faith: Personal Conceptions of Religiosity in the Aouspansberg, South Africa, in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Lecturer in History, St. Augustine College of South Africa

Katrin Jellema, PhD in Anthropology & History
Advisor: Gillian Feeley-Harnik
Dissertation: When You Drink from the Stream, Remember the Source: A Moral Geography of Memory in Renovation-Age Vietnam
Program Director, Certificate in Nonprofit Management, Marlboro College, VT

2006

Zareena Grewal
Advisors: Sherman Jackson and Andrew Shryock
Dissertation: Imagined Cartographies: Crisis, Displacement, and Islam in America
Assistant Professor, Yale University

Edward L. Murphy
Advisor: Fernando Coronil
Dissertation: A Home of One's Own: Finding a Place in the Fractured Landscapes of Urban Chile
Associate Professor, Michigan State University

E. Natalie Rothman
Advisor: Diane Owen Hughes
Dissertation: Between Venice and Istanbul: Trans-Imperial Subjects and Cultural Mediation in the Early Modern Mediterranean
Assistant Professor, University of Toronto

Siew Min Sai
Advisor: E. Webb Keane
Dissertation: Representing the Past of Chinese Language Education: Language, History and Chinese Identities in Indonesia
Faculty, National University of Singapore

Marina E. Welker
Advisor: E. Webb Keane
Dissertation: Global Capitalism and the "Caring Corporation": Copper Mining and Corporate Social Responsibility in Sumbawa, Indonesia
Assistant Professor, Cornell University

2005

Jennifer L. Gaynor
Advisors: Rudolf Mrazek and Ann Stoler
Dissertation: Liquid Territory: Subordination, Memory and Manuscripts among Sama People
Assistant Professor, University at Buffalo-State University of New York

Stefan Henning
Advisors: Erik Mueggler and Brinkley Messick
Dissertation: Nowhere Beyond Good and Evil:  Muslim Activism in China as Ethical Critique, 1929-2001
Visiting Assistant Professor, Northwestern University

Eric Andrew Stein
Advisors: Nancy Hunt and Ann Stoler
Dissertation: Vital Times:  Power, Public Health, and Memory in Rural Java
Faculty, Evergreen State College

2004

David E. Pederson
Advisor: Fernando Coronil
Dissertation: American Value: Migrants, Money and Modernity in El Salvador and the United States
Associate Professor, University of California, San Diego

2003

Shannon L. Dawdy
Advisors: Fernando Coronil and Julius Scott
Dissertation: La Ville Sauvage: ‘Enlightened’ Colonialism and Creole Improvisation in New Orleans, 1699-1769
Associate Professor, University of Chicago

2002

Ilana Kay Feldman
Advisors: Ann Stoler and Brinkley Messick
Dissertation: Interesting Times, Insecure States: The work of government and the making of Gaza in the British mandate and the Egyptian administration, 1917-67
Associate Professor, George Washington University

2001

Setrag Manoukian
Advisor: Brinkley Messick
Dissertation: The City of Knowledge:  History and Culture in Contemporary Shiraz
Associate Professor, McGill University

Carole McGranahan
Advisors: Ann Stoler and Nicholas Dirks
Dissertation: Arrested Histories: Between empire and exile in 20th century Tibet
Associate Professor, University of Colorado, Boulder

2000

Steven Todd Pierce
Advisor: Fred Cooper
Dissertation: Looking for the Legal: Land, law, and Colonialism in Kano Emirate, Nigeri
Senior Lecturer in Modern African History, University of Manchester - UK

Paul K. Eiss
Advisors: Fernando Coronil and Rebecca Scott
Dissertation: Redemption's Archive: Revolutionary figures and Indian work in Yucatán, Mexico
Associate Professor, Carnegie Mellon University

1999

Anne Elizabeth Hardgrove
Advisors: Nicholas Dirks and Thomas Trautmann
Dissertation: Community as public culture in modern India: The Marwaris in Calcutta c. 1897-1997
Associate Professor, University of Texas at San Antonio

Leila Olga Hudson
Advisors: Joshua Cole and  Brinkley Messick
Dissertation: Cultural Capital: Wealth and values in late Ottoman Damascus
Associate Professor, University of Arizona

Anupama P. Rao
Advisors: Valentine Daniel and Nicholas Dirks
Dissertation: Undoing Untouchability? Violence, democracy, and discourses of state in Maharashtra, 1932-1991
Associate Professor, Barnard College, Columbia University

1998

Laura Charlotte Bear
Advisor: Nicholas Dirks
Dissertation: Traveling Modernity: Capitalism, community and nation in the colonial governance of the Indian railways
Professor, Social Anthropology, London School of Economics

Laurent Dubois
Advisor: Fernando Coronil
Dissertation: A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and slave emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1789-1802
Professor, Duke University

Anjan Kumar Ghosh
Advisor: Nicholas Dirks
Dissertation: Partial Truths: Rumor and communal violence in South Asia, 1946-92

1997

Anne Bernadette Waters
Advisor: Nicholas Dirks
Dissertation: Predicaments of Women: The family and the state in the construction of subjectivity in Maharashtra, India
Exec Director Office of International Programs, University of Pennsylvania

Thomas Cox Wolfe
Advisors: Nicholas Dirks and Jane Burbank
Dissertation: Imagining Journalism: Politics, government and the person in the press in the Soviet Union and Russia, 1953-1993
Associate Professor, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

1996

Lessie Jo Frazier
Advisor: Fernando Coronil,
Dissertation: Memory and State Violence in Chile: A historical ethnography of Tarapaca, 1890-1995
Associate Professor, Indiana University-Bloomington

Rosario A. Montoya Del Solar
Advisor: Ruth Behar
Dissertation: Fractured Solidarities: Utopian projects and local hegemonies among a Sandinista peasantry, Nicaragua, 1979-1995
Assistant Professor, Women’s Studies, Western Michigan University