Rice University Anthropology

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Rice University Anthropology

Department of Anthropology at Rice University. Undergraduate and PhD. Observing the complexity of the living. Visit our website.

Transformative social theory and methodological innovation.

08/06/2026

This spring, our professor Nia Georges became the first Rice faculty member to teach at Venice International University — a consortium of 23 institutions sharing a single campus on the island of San Servolo. Her students designed original ethnographic projects across Venice, from the fish market to questions of child care in Italian families.

🔗 Read more here: https://news.rice.edu/news/2026/rices-first-professor-venice-international-university-returns-fresh-eye-classroom

08/03/2026

🎉 Congratulations!

Rising junior Lillian Alexander received the Charles Garside Ancient Mediterranean Civilizations Summer Travel Grant this year, allowing her to attend a field school just outside of Rome, Italy.

As a student on the Gabii Project, Lillian spent five weeks this summer learning open trench excavation techniques, familiarizing herself with Roman ceramics and methods for sorting and drawing them, practicing several environmental archaeology techniques, and building connections in the field of classical archaeology.

Beyond the excavation site, she explored many Roman ruins and museums, enriching her excavation experience and deepening her understanding of what she was studying.

Congratulations, Lillian, on this incredible achievement!

07/29/2026

Congratulations to our student, Simran Haribhai, for being named a Fulbright Scholar! 🎉

Simran has been awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student Program scholarship and will serve as an English teaching assistant in Mexico through the U.S.-Mexico Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange. Alongside her teaching, she will lead a community project with a local NGO supporting survivors of domestic violence.

She hopes this experience will deepen her commitment to cross-cultural education and advocacy, and reinforce her long-term goal of pursuing a career in law focused on supporting survivors of gender-based violence.

Read here: https://news.rice.edu/news/2026/four-rice-graduates-earn-fulbright-scholarships

07/22/2026

📃 Dr. Mary Prendergast co-authored a new study in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)!

Using stable isotope analysis on remains from more than 100 ancient individuals across Kenya and Tanzania, the research team found that eastern Africa's earliest herders held onto a broad, varied diet — fish, wild game, wild plants — for at least 1,000 years after adopting livestock, rather than shifting quickly to relying mainly on cattle, sheep, and goats.

Read the full article here: https://news.rice.edu/news/2026/even-after-adopting-cattle-early-herders-kept-hunting-and-gathering

07/20/2026

Congratulations to PhD student Hyeyoon Kwon, who has been awarded the Expanding Horizons Scholarship from The Rice University Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (GPS), as well as support from the Chao Center for Asian Studies.

The Expanding Horizons Scholarship is generously funded by Rice alumnus Dr. Walter Loewenstern. The fellowship provides students with the opportunity to conduct research-related travel that will benefit the local communities connected to their research while expanding their knowledge and experience.

Hyeyoon Kwon's doctoral project examines how local communities in Mount Jiri, South Korea, live with reintroduced Asiatic black bears within a longer history of state violence, from the Korean War to Cold War conservation regimes. With support from the Expanding Horizons Fellowship and the Chao Center for Asian Studies, she will conduct ethnographic fieldwork in Mount Jiri this summer, producing a bilingual booklet and an interactive digital map based on oral histories collected with local residents.

Read the full article here: https://anthropology.rice.edu/news/hyeyoon-kwon-receives-expanding-horizons-scholarship-and-support-chao-center-asian-studies

07/16/2026

We're proud to spotlight our student, Isabella Campos (Hanszen '26)!

For Isabella, working at an archaeological site transformed classroom theory into a tool for sharing stories from the past. Excavating the Varner-Hogg Plantation in Brazoria County provided the chance to see how raw data can bring lost narratives to life, while also sharpening the analytical skills she needs in her future legal career.

Read the article here: https://anthropology.rice.edu/news/digging-deeper-my-rice-archaeology-field-experience-isabella-campos

05/22/2026

Exciting news from our graduate students featured by the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality! ✨

🏆 Hongyun Yu received the Seth Balkishan Das Singhal Award for his paper "Uterotopic Fantasies and Far-Right Gender Imaginaries among Chinese Working-Class Male Migrants in Africa."

🎓 Quinn Georgic, Kristin Gupta, and Timothy Quinn were featured as Graduate Certificate students who earned their doctorates.

Congratulations!

05/18/2026

Congratulations! 🎉

Alejandra Osejo-Varona has been named as one of the outstanding PhD candidates for this year’s Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellows for her research project, "Hippos in the Afterlives of the Drug Trafficking in Colombia: Enduring Marks on the Magdalena River." Colombia’s hippos raise a difficult question: when animals don’t belong, who decides whether they should live or die?

The Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship supports doctoral work that demonstrates moral or ethical or theological/religious relevance with nuance, depth, and intellectual sophistication. Started in 1981, the Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship has funded over 1,400 Fellows and is the nation’s largest and most prestigious award for PhD candidates in the humanities and social sciences addressing questions of religion, ethics, morals, or values.

Alejandra Osejo-Varona is one of twenty fellows chosen this year from a pool of 600 applicants. She is featured in the Rice Research Magazine, Spring 2026 (p. 22-23).

🔗 Rice Anthropology: https://anthropology.rice.edu/news/alejandra-osejo-varona-awarded-charlotte-w-newcombe-doctoral-dissertation-fellow
🔗 Rice Research Magazine: https://issuu.com/riceuniversity/docs/rice_magazine_spring_2026

05/12/2026

Professor and Associate Chair Cymene Howe has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of Oxford Bibliographies in Anthropology, effective Spring 2026. Professor Howe will lead the editorial board, which oversees the development, peer review, and continuous updating of the digital resource, with new articles added regularly to provide comprehensive coverage of the field.

Professor Howe said, “I’m excited to begin engaging with each of the contributing authors and my excellent team of Area Editors at Oxford Bibliographies!”

Oxford Bibliographies in Anthropology is an exclusive, online, peer-reviewed resource that combines the features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia. It offers authoritative, expert-curated research guides covering all four subfields of anthropology to help students and scholars find and assess the best available literature.
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/obo/page/anthropology #2

05/10/2026

Congratulations to all our graduates! 🎓✨

Special congrats to doctoral graduates Kristin Gupta and Melanie Ford, and to Veronica Solis Mora on completing her Master's degree.

We are proud of all our undergraduate & graduate students and excited to see what's next.

Address

PO Box 1892
Houston, TX
77251

Telephone

713.348.4847

Website

http://anthropology.rice.edu/

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