Apr. 29, 2025 — Each year, SMU’s Office of Engaged Learning selects two faculty members for Excellence in Mentoring Awards. Recipients of the Excellence in Mentoring Award are nominated by their mentees.
We are delighted to share that one of the 2024-2025 winners is Anthropology’s Elizabeth Berk. We congratulate her on this well-deserved recognition of her outstanding advising!
Apr. 22, 2025 — Each year, the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) presents the Fryxell Award, an honor given “in recognition of interdisciplinary excellence.” The SAA has announced that the 2025 recipient is David J. Meltzer, Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory. Meltzer will receive his award and be honored with a half-day symposium this week in Denver at the SAA’s 90th Annual Meeting. The department congratulates Professor Meltzer on this well-deserved celebration of his scholarship!
Apr. 15, 2025 — The department is excited to share that it will host Dr. Katiane Silva (PPGA-Federal University of Pará; Visiting Fulbright Scholar, University of Georgia) for a brown bag talk on Tuesday, April 22, 2025. Her presentation, “Socio-Environmental Conflicts and Resistance in the Demarcation of Indigenous Lands in the Brazilian Amazon,” will be held from 12p-1pm in the Founders’ Room, Heroy Hall 407. An abstract for the talk is below.
Socio-Environmental Conflicts and Resistance in the Demarcation of Indigenous Lands in the Brazilian Amazon
Indigenous territorial rights are frequently challenged by commercial interests to serve global markets. They have been disputed since the colonial period. In the Brazilian Amazon and state of Pará, these rights and broader forest conservation efforts are affected by the advance of soybean monoculture. Throughout the Amazon region, indigenous presence is perceived as mitigating the impacts of the expanding the agricultural frontier, resulting in complex and often violent territorial dynamics. I propose an ethnographic study of socio-environmental conflicts generated by the demarcation of the Munduruku and Apiaká Indigenous Land in Santarém, a region known as the Santareno Plateau along the lower Amazon River, and its local and global impacts. This project examines the resistance strategies of indigenous people and contradictory state practices in a context characterized by increased violence and anti-indigenous policies between 2018 and 2022.
Apr. 9, 2025 — Assistant Professor Kelly McKowen has been named Faculty Co-Chair of the SMU Global Strategy Committee. Working with Dayna Oscherwitz, Associate Provost for Institutional Planning and Effectiveness, McKowen will help develop the SMU Global Strategic Plan and spearhead efforts to promote, support, and measure the effectiveness of the university’s internationalization initiatives.
The SMU Global Strategy Committee consists of representatives from around the university and supports subcommittees on International Scholar Process and Policy, International Collaborations, and International Student Recruitment and Retention.
Apr. 3, 2025 — The Department of Anthropology is thrilled to announce that Dr. Xiaoyue Li will join the faculty in fall 2025 as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Li is an environmental anthropologist specializing in Indigenous knowledge systems. Her ongoing research focuses on climate change impacts and wild food resources, showing how traditional ecological knowledge interfaces with contemporary environmental and socioeconomic challenges. With extensive fieldwork experience in China, Madagascar, and across multiple indigenous communities including the Akha, the Nuosu, and the Tanalana, she is working to illuminate the relationship between biocultural diversity conservation and climate change adaptation.
Dr. Li’s work has been published in various peer-reviewed journals, including Environmental Science & Policy, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Communications Earth & Environment, and Global Food Security. She has also contributed to major international assessments, such as the IPCC 6th Assessment Report and the IPBES Assessment of Sustainable Use of Wild Species.
Before joining the Department of Anthropology at SMU, Dr. Li worked as a research consultant for the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History and USAID. She previously held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Spain and worked as a research consultant for UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme. She earned her Ph.D. in Applied Anthropology from Oregon State University in 2017.