Nov. 12, 2025 — Professor Christopher I. Roos‘s recent research on the historical use of fire among the Apache people has received extensive coverage in The Arizona Republic, Arizona’s largest newspaper. The story, “Tree Rings Reveal How Apache People Used Fire to Shape and Protect Their Environment,” describes how Roos and his collaborators studied burning practices and stewardship among the Western Apache.
Sep. 5, 2025 — The Department of Anthropology is thrilled to announce a major new initiative: the Caroline B. Brettell Seminars in Anthropology. This new permanent and endowed departmental lecture series is a tribute to the inimitable example of its namesake and funder, Dr. Caroline Brettell, University Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Ruth Collins Altshuler Professor. Before transferring to emeritus status during the 2022-2023 academic year, Dr. Brettell was on the faculty at SMU for four decades, serving at various times as department chair, interim dean of Dedman College, and founding director of the Dedman College Interdisciplinary Institute. Widely recognized as one of the leading cultural anthropologists of her generation, she was made a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017.
With her extraordinarily generous financial contribution, Dr. Brettell has put the department in the position to host an annual series of seminars—on topics of broad appeal—featuring rising stars, innovators, and influential voices in Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology. Each year the seminar slate will also include the department’s two distinguished lectures, the Fred Wendorf Distinguished Lecture in Archaeology and the George and Mary Foster Distinguished Lecture in Cultural Anthropology. The events are free and open to all.
More information about the 2025-2026 Caroline B. Brettell Seminars in Anthropology is available here.
July 22, 2025 — SMU graduate alumna Rose Jones (PhD ’94), a medical anthropologist, is quoted in a front-page story in today’s Dallas Morning News, “Extreme Heat Could Impact the Promise of Economic Growth in North Texas.” Jones, who studies extreme heat and its effects, highlights the city’s pressing need for a plan: “If Dallas is literally a national hot spot, the next question becomes, well, what are we doing about it?”
May 29, 2025 — The groundbreaking research published recently in Nature by faculty members Mike A. Adler, David J. Meltzer, and Matthew T. Boulanger was the subject of a news feature on KRQE in Albuquerque (below). This work has also been covered by the Washington Post, Houston Chronicle, Smithsonian Magazine, Associated Press, Reuters, LiveScience, ArsTechnica, and other outlets.
Mar. 28, 2025 — Visiting Lecturer Aanmona Priyadarshini has a new op-ed out in New Age, a major English-language Bangladeshi media outlet. In the piece, “Freedom is a Verb,” Priyadarshini calls for a confrontation with lingering issues in Bangladesh. “We have a choice to make,” she writes. “We can be indolent optimists, passively clinging to the hope that ‘someone else will bring us freedom.’ We can be opportunistic cynics, smugly saying, ‘Told you, nothing will change,’ as we retreat into the comforts of a so-called ‘normal’ life where nothing is truly normal. Or, we can rise as our own emancipators, breaking every chain that binds us, knowing that ‘freedom is a verb’ — never finished, never complete — but an ongoing action, a relentless drive.”
Dec. 6, 2024 — Assistant Professor Elyse Ona Singer was recently interviewed by City, University of London’s Miranda Melcher for the New Books Network podcast. In the episode, Singer discusses her award-winning ethnography, Lawful Sins: Abortion Rights and Reproductive Governance in Mexico (Stanford University Press, 2022).
Dec. 2, 2024 — Professor Neely Myers published an op-ed last week in the Dallas Morning News. In the piece, “Young Psychosis Patients Need Early Intervention,” Myers argues that youth with psychosis need proactive forms of care that empower them to feel that they can control their lives and gain respect from others. Myers develops these ideas further in her new book, Breaking Points: Youth Mental Health Crises and How We All Can Help (University of California Press, 2024).