Anthropology: Faculty and Staff
Dr. Stephanie May de Montigny, Chair
Associate Professor
Office: Swart 317A
Phone: (920) 424-7495
Email: may@uwosh.edu
Education:
Stephanie May de Montigny is a cultural anthropologist. Her courses and research interests include Native American studies, kinship, gender and sexuality, ethnohistory, vernacular architecture, and visual art and dance. She also teaches classes on ethnographic methods, American ethnography, and expressive culture.
Dr. Jeffrey Behm
Professor
Education:
Dr.Behm’s interests include Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene hunter-gatherers, lithic technology, ceramic technology, archaeology of Historic Native Americans, experimental archaeology, and archaeometry. He has maintained an active program of field and laboratory research that involves undergraduates at many levels.
Dr. Pete Brown
Associate Dean COLS/Professor
Education:
Dr. Pete Brown is a culutral anthropologist. His interests include globalization, inequality, identity, history, activism, and social movements. Most of his researh has been conducted in southern Mexico, in the state of Chiapas, though he has traveled (and in some cases taken students) to Peru, guatemala, Belize, and Cameroon (West Africa).
Dr. Jordan Karsten
Assistant Professor
Email: karstenj@uwosh.edu
Jordan Karsten is a biological anthropologist with research interests in human osteology, bioarchaeology, forensic anthropology, and paleoanthropology. One major focus of Dr. Karsten’s research has been investigating the biological and behavioral consequences of the transition to agriculture in prehistory. This research has been carried out through the analysis of human skeletons that he’s excavated from Verteba Cave, Ukraine, that date to the late Neolithic period. Dr. Karsten also works with local law enforcement to analyze and identify human bone recovered from potential crime scenes and other death investigations.
Dr. Stephanie Spehar
Associate Professor
Stephanie Spehar is a physical anthropologist whose area of specialization is primate socioecology, or how ecology and the environment have shaped primate social systems and behavior. Within this framework, her research focuses on primate mating systems, group dynamics and social behavior, and communication. A second major research interest is primate conservation, especially the effect of habitat alteration, fragmentation, and hunting on primate communities.
Dr. Heidi Nicholls
Lecturer
Education:
Ph.D. Anthropology. University at Albany, SUNY, 2014
BA Cleveland State University
Dr. Heidi J Nicholls is a cultural anthropologist with research interests that include indigenous heritage tourism, intercultural relations and dynamics, US diversity, cultural expressions through dance and economic development. Dr. Nicholls has conducted ethnographic research on the Navajo (Dine) Reservation, in Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Anguilla in addition to working as a cultural consultant focused on interactional competency, bias, and etymology.
Dr. Adrienne Frie
Lecturer
Office: Swart 314
Email: friea@uwosh.edu
Education:
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
M.A., University of Chicago
B.A., University of California San Diego
Adrienne Frie is an anthropological archaeologist whose research specialties include prehistoric Europe, human-animal relations, and prehistoric art. Dr. Frie’s ongoing research is focused on Iron Age Slovenia, where she investigates how animal depictions and faunal remains provide insight into prehistoric interactions with and ideas about animals. Her work has demonstrated that prehistoric conceptions of animals were expressed and negotiated via imagery, but also that animal symbolism was a potent form of social expression, and one that was restricted by status and social role. This research is multidisciplinary, and in addition to archaeological evidence takes into account animal behavior, local environments, and the socioeconomic structures surrounding animal husbandry and other human-animal interactions.