March 24, 2025 | 5-7pm
Archaeology and Environmental Justice Symposium
Belk Library Room 114
Today, we face an array of challenges stemming from climate change, its impacts on the environment, and its intersections with complex social, political, and economic systems. People in the past confronted similar challenges. By exploring their stories, we can discover important lessons about human ingenuity, sustainability, and resilience. This symposium brings together archaeologists working across the Americas and Africa to discuss human-environment interactions in the past and their relationship to environmental justice in the present. Speakers will present their own research and participate in a moderated discussion to reveal common themes and local and global connections. All are welcome!
Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology and the Pathways to Resilience QEP.
The Speakers
Dr. Keitlyn Alcantara
University of Indiana
Dr. Alcantara is an anthropological bioarchaeologist and public scholar whose work contextualizes food sovereignty movements in Late Postclassic and contemporary Tlaxcala, Mexico.
Learn more about her research here.
Dr. Amanda Logan
Northwestern University
Dr. Logan is a paleoethnobotanist whose research in West Africa explores food security and food sovereignty in different environmental and political contexts over the last millennium.
Learn more about her research here.
Dr. Chelsea Fisher
University of South Carolina
Dr. Fisher is an archaeologist who works with Maya communities in Yucatán to understand the deep histories of Maya ecological knowledge and agriculture in different political and economic settings.
Learn more about her research here.
Dr. Sophie Dent
Appalachian State University
Dr. Dent is a biological anthropologist who works with Indigenous communities in North Carolina to reconstruct past food practices and amplify Indigenous food sovereignty and nutritional ecology knowledge.
Learn more about her research here.
Dr. Seth Grooms
Appalachian State University
Dr. Grooms is an archaeologist whose work with the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina links Indigenous heritage with contemporary political, social, and environmental interests.
Learn more about his research here.
Questions? Feel free to reach out to Dr. Alice Wright in the Department of Anthropology, at wrightap2@appstate.edu.