Tags: Alumni

Sarieh Amiribeirami Smiling
PhD Student, Sarieh Amiribeirami, co-authored paper published in scientific journal Nature

PhD Student, Sarieh Amiribeirami, co-authored a paper published in the scientific journal, Nature. Read below for a brief description of the work and if you'd like to access the full paper follow this link. Dogs have been companions for humans for millennia. They were the first animal to be domesticated, and remains with possible dog morphology have been dated to at least 14,000 years ago. But the exact origins and nature of early dog remains a…

Dr. Don Nelson
Dr. Don Nelson Awarded UGA's 2025 Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grant

Dr. Don Nelson is a part of a team of investigators on the "Resilient Agricultural Landscapes Initiative". This cohort is comprised of many investigators both internally and externally including Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of Anthropology, College of Engineering, Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems, Institute for Integrative Precision Agriculture, Archway Partnership, College of Agriculture and Environmental…

Dr. Holland-Lulewicz headshot.
Dr. Isabelle Holland-Lulewicz, BA & BS ‘15, PhD ‘20, will be joining the department as the alumni speaker at our Undergraduate Commencement Ceremony

Dr. Isabelle Holland-Lulewicz graduated from the University of Georgia with a BA in Anthropology and BS in Geology in 2015 and again with her PhD in Anthropology in 2020. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Faculty in Ecology at Pennsylvania State University where she is the director of the Socio-ecological Histories of Estuarine Landscapes (SHEL) Lab at Penn State. Her primary research program focuses on the…


Departmental Award Recipients 2026

Join us in congratulating the following students on receiving departmental award funding this year and read more to learn about their plans. Seungyeon Hong  Recipient of the Janis Faith Steingruber Student Travel Award  With the grant, I will go back to South Korea this summer to collect legacy wood materials from Korean museums for radiocarbon dating. This will help reconstruct regional chronologies during the period of state…

Rui Bai
Rui Bai, PhD Student, Publishes Two Articles

Rui Bai, a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology, recently published two articles examining how prehistoric communities in China organized themselves thousands of years ago. The first, published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, analyzes burial practices at the Shixia site in southern China (ca. 5,000–4,000 years ago) and finds that this society maintained significant social differences through flexible, competitive…

Lilia smiling
Lilia Goldberg named Top 100 Student Employee of the Year

Third year undergraduate student, Lilia Goldberg, was named one of the Top 100 Student Employees of the Year. Under Dr. Roberta Salmi's guidance, she spent the fall and spring of this past year gathering information on and cataloguing the Department of Anthropology's primate specimens. She reorganized and relabeled the display cases for fossil casts in one of the classrooms. Lilia shared that she "loved getting to do some detective work to…


Research Seminar Explores New Approaches to the Early Colonial Southeast

This semester, our department hosted a research seminar that brought together scholars working to deepen understanding of the social landscape of the Southeast before, during, and after the Spanish entradas led by Hernando de Soto (1539–1543) and Juan Pardo (1566–1568). Participants examined how to more effectively situate Indigenous communities, town sites, and early colonial encounters within absolute calendrical time, while also looking…

Dr Roberta Salmi
Dr. Roberta Salmi has been selected as a recipient of the 2026 Sandy Beaver Excellence in Teaching Award

Dr. Roberta Salmi has been selected as a recipient of the 2026 Sandy Beaver Excellence in Teaching Award. This award is given annually to “outstanding faculty in the Franklin College who have shown a sustained commitment to high-quality instruction”1. Students of Dr. Salmi describe her as engaging, kind, and passionate. Hadley Mueller-Hill, PhD Student, recently expressed her gratitude for Dr. Salmi’s mentorship:  She is described by her…


Anthroday 2026

On Thursday, February 19, 2026, University of Georgia’s department of Anthropology celebrated World Anthropology Day at the Miller Learning Center Colonnade. Anthroday 2026 brought together undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and staff from across campus to celebrate, engage and inspire!   With delightfully warm weather, cold lemonade, interactive exhibits, and even a kayak, Anthroday had wonderful attendance…

Dr Stefan Brannan and Dr Jen Birch
Alumni Spotlight: Dr. Stefan Brannan

By: Cassie Hausdorf Reflecting on his journey at the University of Georgia (UGA), Stefan shares how his experiences at UGA shaped his current career!  Stefan originally chose to attend UGA when he was living in Georgia and his job at the time had a glass ceiling that could only be overcome via an advanced degree. He saw that UGA had just started their M.S. in Archaeological Resource Management, which checked all the boxes he needed to…
Subscribe to Alumni