Spotlight Fall 2026

Alumni Spotlight Fall 2026

Renee Kuban — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 21:12:34 +0000

Alumni Spotlight Fall 2026 Renee Kuban Mon, 09/14/2026 - 15:12

Magdalena E. Stawkowski (Anthropology, PhD 2014)

Magdalena Stawkowski studies how people make lives in poisoned landscapes. Her book Atomic Collective: Radioactive Life in Kazakhstan follows communities near the former Semipalatinsk Test Site as they build ordinary lives on contaminated ground. At the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, she studies tritium and the slow politics of environmental abandonment. Her new comparative project follows contaminated forests across several countries, where trees, soil, people, and radioactivity entangle over decades. These are forests shaped by layered histories of military violence, radioactive and otherwise.

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Faculty Spotlight Fall 2026

Renee Kuban — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 21:11:55 +0000

Faculty Spotlight Fall 2026 Renee Kuban Mon, 09/14/2026 - 15:11

Art Joyce (Archaeology)

I am a Mesoamerican archaeologist who directs a large-scale interdisciplinary project in Oaxaca, Mexico. This research has included survey and excavation at the ancient cities of Río Viejo and Tututepec and excavation of a 13,000-year-old Paleoindian site as well as paleoecological, paleoclimatological, and geomorphological research on prehispanic climate and anthropogenic landscape change. I currently use posthumanism, Peircean semiotics, and Indigenous Mesoamerican knowledge to explore the interrelationship of maize agriculture, mountains, sacrifice, creation narratives, divine rulership, and the emergence of urbanism in Mesoamerica. My research has been published in journals ranging from Quaternary Science Reviews and Current Anthropology to World Art.

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Graduate Student Spotlight Fall 2026

Renee Kuban — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 21:10:32 +0000

Graduate Student Spotlight Fall 2026 Renee Kuban Mon, 09/14/2026 - 15:10

Cristian Figueroa (Archaeology, PhD in Progress)

Cristian Figueroa’s primary research investigates questions related to shifting social identities across time as a result of local and interregional interaction, migration, and exchange. Cristian takes an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together methodologies from anthropological archaeology, linguistic anthropology, art history, Indigenous ontologies, and queer studies to comprehend how social identity is constructed and (re)shaped as a result of interactions with various social spheres and landscapes. Cristian is currently analyzing material collections from the Comcaac Indigenous community in Sonora, México to explore the human and other-than-human interactions and what these interactions reveal about the persistence of Comcaac cosmologies spanning from the pre-European contact period through counterparty times.

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Undergraduate Spotlight Fall 2026

Renee Kuban — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 21:09:17 +0000

Undergraduate Spotlight Fall 2026 Renee Kuban Mon, 09/14/2026 - 15:09

Eden Lewis (Anthropology, BA in Progress)

I am a current senior studying Anthropology, with a minor in Environmental Studies. This past summer, I gained experience in the field of cultural resource management, interning under an archaeologist at the Bureau of Land Management in Kremmling, CO. Additionally, in 2025, I completed a one-month field school in the Khövsgöl region of Mongolia, aiding with the excavation of Bronze Age and medieval-era burials. Through CU, I have worked with Dr. Lauren Hosek as a research assistant studying the presence of dental enamel hypoplasias at four medieval Czech sites, and will be doing data entry this upcoming year for the SEERA (Settlement of Early Rural America) project alongside Dr. Eric Jones and Dr. Sharon DeWitte.

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