People
Faculty
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Traci Ardren, Ph.D. (Yale University, 1997)
Associate Professor
- 305-284-4912
Dr. Ardren is an anthropological archaeologist interested in New World prehistoric cultures and the myriad ways the ancient past is interpreted. Her research focuses on gender, iconography, architecture and other forms of symbolic representation in the archaeological record. Dr. Ardren has conducted excavations on the west coast of Florida, at the Audubon House in Key West, at a Mississippian period site in Kentucky, and at Maya cities in Belize and Mexico. She occasionally teaches an archaeological field school at locations throughout Florida during January Intersession. Dr. Ardren was co-curator of the exhibition Visions of Empire: Picturing the Conquest in Colonial México at the Lowe Museum of Art in 2003, and Curator of Flowers for the Earth Lord: Guatemalan Textiles from the Lowe Art Museum Permanent Collection in 2006. Recent publications include Ancient Maya Women (AltaMira Press 2002), The Social Experience of Childhood in Ancient Mesoamerica (University Press of Colorado 2006), and “Mending the Past: Ixchel and the Invention of a Modern Pop Goddess” in the journal Antiquity (2006).
Research: Dr. Ardren directs excavations at Xuenkal, an ancient Maya center in the northern Yucatán peninsula that dates to the Classic period (200 - 900 A.D.). She is examining how the rise of the mega city of Chichén Itzá affected outlying settlements through detailed analysis of economic activities such as shell working, cotton cloth manufacture, and cacao arboculture. Dr. Ardren is finishing a publication on Maya queens and writing a book on identity in the archaeological record of the northern Maya lowlands.
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Ann W. Brittain, Ph.D. (Pennslyvania University, 1983)
Associate Professor
- 305-284-2380
Dr. Brittain studies intra-American migration and demography, with an emphasis on reproductive decision-making in the Caribbean.
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Caleb Everett, Ph.D. (Rice University, 2006)
Assistant Professor
- Personal Site
- 305-284-2535
Dr. Everett is an anthropological linguist fascinated by a variety of language-related phenomena. These include unusual sound patterns that can be described via acoustic phonetics. For example, he is interested in the patterns of nasality found in Tupi languages of the Amazon. His interests also include non-phonetic phenomena, for example the ‘preferred argument structure’ that helps motivate case patterns in the world’s languages. Finally, he is interested in current research on how (and to what extent) the language one speaks affects his/her cognition in domains such as spatial topology, gender perception, and action perception.
Caleb spends much of his time doing field research in Brazil. Among other things, this field work involves playing soccer and eating churrasco.
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Pamela Geller, Ph.D. (University of Pennsylvania, 2004)
Visiting Assistant Professor
- 305-284-2380
Dr. Geller is strongly committed to the notion of archaeology as a sub-discipline that should draw insights from throughout the social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences. With this in mind, she uses a theoretically informed bioarchaeological framework to examine the body and the meanings encoded in its transformation, whether through intentional modification or habitual activity. The body also provides a springboard for thinking about her other diverse research interests – pre-Columbian cultures, bioarchaeology, feminist and social theories, identity and its materiality, and the socio-politics of archaeology. Amongst her publications is the co-edited volume Feminist Anthropology: Past, Present, and Future (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). She has conducted fieldwork in Israel and Hawai’i, and her more recent investigations have examined pre-Columbian Maya and ethnically diverse peoples living in the modern day nations of Belize and Honduras, respectively. In the future, she anticipates undertaking collaborative bioarchaeological research, examining the ancient Chiribaya of southern coastal Perú.
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Robert A. Halberstein, Ph.D. (University of Kansas, 1973)
Associate Professor
- 305-284-2380
Dr. R. A. Halberstein completed his undergraduate training with a dual major in Anthropology and Psychology at Pennsylvania State University. He received a M.A. degree from the University of Pittsburgh and a Ph.D. in Physical Anthropology at the University of Kansas. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Miami. He has also held teaching and research appointments in the UM School of Medicine. He is Director of the Anthropology Department's Museum Studies Internship Program, and he served as department chairperson for four years and as Program Coordinator for an additional two years. He teaches an interdisciplinary course on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in conjunction with the UM School of Nursing.
Dr. Halberstein has conducted field research in Central America, the Caribbean, and in the urban USA in the areas of Physical, Medical, and Forensic Anthropology. He has published on topics such as human evolution, anthropological genetics, environmental adaptation/health, biodemography, human biological variation, forensic identification, cross-cultural medical practices, and the biological effects of urbanization. He is a member of a number of professional societies including the American Anthropological Association, American Association of Physical Anthropologists, Society for Medical Anthropology, Human Biology Association, American Association of Anthropological Genetics, Dental Anthropology Association, Council For Museum Anthropology, Association of Caribbean Studies, and the Florida Academy of Sciences.
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Edward LiPuma, Ph.D. (University of Chicago, 1985)
Professor
- 305-284-2380
Dr. LiPuma is presently doing research on labor migration into South Florida and theoretical studies of cultural integration in the developing world.
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Louis Herns Marcelin, Ph.D. (Universidad Federal Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1996)
Assistant Professor
- 305-284-8493
Louis Herns Marcelin is Director of Research at the Family and Youth Community Research Center, Inc. of which he is a co-founder. He is also the Principal Investigator for the Haitian Adolescent Study at the Department of Anthropology. He recently completed a large-scale NIDA funded study of Haitian youth gangs and delinquency in Miami-Dade, Florida. He is conducting research both in Brazil and Haiti on Family, Kinship, and Politics as well as on Uses and Memories of Political Violence in Haiti and Brazil (with Núcleo de Estudo da Política, Programa de Pós-graduação in Antropologia Social -PPGAS-, Departamento de andtropologia, Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where he has a visiting Research Faculty appointment).
Dr. Marcelin is directing a three year study of Haitian adolescents and their families in Miami-Dade, which purpose is to understand the daily life of the adolescents, with emphasis on experiences of sexuality, lifestyles, network properties, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STD) risk behaviors, and identity formation. He recently completed a study of Youth Gangs and their family contexts in the Haitian community in Miami-Dade. He is currently studying the increasing involvement of the juvenile justice system in the lives of Haitian adolescents and their families. He is also conducting research both in Brazil and Haiti on Family, Kinship and Politics as well as on Uses and Memories of Political Violence.
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J. Bryan Page, Ph.D. (University of Florida, 1976)
Professor
Dr. Page specializes in studying the consumption of drugs, focusing particularly on recently arrived immigrant populations. He is currently participating in five related projects, including a project on family intervention for prevention of drug abuse among Haitian and African-American youth, a study of Haitian gangs, a study of the relationship between intravenous drug use and spread of HIV, and two projects to lower HIV risks in high-risk groups.
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Linda L. Taylor, Ph.D. (Washington University, 1986)
Associate Professor
- 305-284-2380
Dr. Taylor specializes in the study of kinship and social structure in primates. She is a visiting scholar in primatology at the Duke University Primate Center and has published more than 30 articles on primates, including work in American Journal of Primatology and International Journal of Primatology . Dr. Taylor has been recognized with an Excellence in Teaching award in 1997.
Dr. Taylor has been awarded several grants for research on primate behavior, focusing on aging lemur populations. These interests have taken her to venues as close as Monkey Jungle and as far away as Madagascar.
All of the active faculty have research sites in distant places (e.g., Papua New Guinea, Madagascar, Bahamas, Leeward islands, Central America, Spain, South America, Yucatán and Haiti).
