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Ann Kingsolver
Director, Appalachian Studies Program
Professor of Anthropology

My career came full circle when I moved back to Kentucky to direct the Appalachian Center and Appalachian Studies Program at UK from 2011-2015. I grew up in Nicholas County, Kentucky. In the 1980s, I returned to there to do ethnographic research for my dissertation in the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at U. Mass. / Amherst, where I was inspired by colleagues in a participatory research collective and by collective conversations at the intersections of political ecology, cultural geography, anthropology, and political economy. I continue to learn from residents in my home community along with residents of a number of other rural regions in the world. In the early 1990s, I participated in starting the Culture & Power Ph.D. program in Anthropology as a faculty member at UC Santa Cruz, and then in the late 1990s I helped start the Ph.D. program focused on comparative diasporas and social justice in Anthropology at the University of South Carolina (as a faculty member and then department chair), before coming to the University of Kentucky. In the fall of 2021, I have begun a four-year term as director of UK's Appalachian Studies Program, and look forward to supporting collaborative conversations across and beyond the UK campus. 

Contact Information
ann.kingsolver@uky.edu
Appalachian Center, 624 Maxwelton Ct., Rm. 202
203A Lafferty Hall
Office hours Wed. 2-4PM Lafferty 203A, and by appt.
Email me to set up a meeting.
859-218-4088
Education
B.A. in Anthropology & Sociology with Honors, Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College), 1982; M.A. in Anthropology, U Mass. / Amherst, 1987; Ph.D. in Anthropology, U Mass. / Amherst, 1991. Dissertation: "Tobacco, Toyota, and Subaltern Development Discourses: Constructing Livelihoods and Community in Rural Kentucky."
Research Interests
  • globalization
  • critiques of racial capitalism
  • interpretations of place and identity
  • Anthropology of Work
  • transnational collaborations
  • university-community knowledge equity
Affiliations
  • Anthropology
  • Appalachian Center
  • Environmental and Sustainability Studies
  • Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies
  • International Studies