Anthropology professor Sarah Lyon’s New Book: Coffee and Community: Maya Farmers and Fair Trade Markets has just been released. 

Lyon's ethnographic analysis of fair-trade coffee analyzes the collective action and combined efforts of fair-trade network participants to construct a new economic reality. Focusing on La Voz Que Clama en el Desierto, a cooperative in San Juan la Laguna, Guatemala, and its relationships with coffee roasters, importers, and certifiers in the United States, "Coffee and Community" argues that while fair trade does benefit small coffee-farming communities, it is more flawed than advocates and scholars have acknowledged.

Through ethnographic fieldwork with the

Fox Farm: A Fort Ancient Village ( A.D. 1100-1650), Mason County, Kentucky
June 9 - August 4, 2011

Fox Farm is one of the largest Fort Ancient sites in the Ohio River valley. It sits on a broad, gently rolling ridgetop about 60 miles north of Lexington, near Maysville, Kentucky. Prehistoric village farming peoples, whom archaeologists call “Fort Ancient,” lived at Fox Farm from about A.D. 1100 to 1650.

Research at the site spans more than a century. It has documented a long-term, intensive occupation, marked by thick cultural deposits, evidence of structure rebuilding, and multiple plazas, mounds, and cemeteries. Despite this long history of investigation, the site itself is very poorly understood. Last summer, the

UK Anthropology professor Scott R Hutson was recently awarded two grants to continue his research in the state of Yucatan in Mexico: the Maya Area Cultural Heritage Initiative (MACHI) Grant and a National Science Fund (NSF) Grant, both supporting his work with the Ucí-Cansahcab Regional Integration Project.

“This project has broader impact than what can be learned about the ancient Maya,” Hutson said. His collaborative work with professors from George Mason University and Brigham Young University is focused on both archaeological discovery and promoting the preservation of cultural heritage.

The MACHI funding – the result of

Now more than ever, in the context of a globalizing world and internationalizing curriculum, place matters. And the University of Kentucky has always responded to the need to serve Kentucky through analyzing the connections between the local and the global. 
 
"Place Matters," a four-part lecture series exploring the importance of place in research, pedagogy and citizenship will continue the global conversation, according to UK sociology professor and series organizer Dwight Billings.
 
"We aim to focus on how place matters in Appalachian Studies, but also, how our concerns — the role of place in scholarship, teaching and citizenship — are shared across many disciplines and programs at UK," Billings explained. "While the theme of connectivity can be found throughout 30 years of

Among the six University of Kentucky professors receiving the 2011Great Teacher Award for their excellence in the classroom by the UK Alumni Association is Assistant Professor of Anthropology Erin Koch.

>>Watch the video highlighting all the honorees

Started in 1961, the Great Teacher Award is the oldest continuous award that recognizes teaching at UK. The nominations are made by students. Selection of the award recipients is made by the UK Alumni Association Great Teacher Award Committee, in cooperation with the student organization Omicron Delta Kappa. Great Teacher Award recipients each receive a citation

The health issues found in South Africa and Appalachia are as distinctive as each region's history, culture and tradition. But according to City University of New York (CUNY) anthropology professor Ida Susser, public health is universal -- affecting the lives of millions daily.

Susser and other will participate in a symposium examining public health issues from both areas.  The University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences "Kentucky and South Africa: Different Lands, Common Ground" initiative will lead the Commonwealth in a global conversation Friday, Jan. 28, with

In the time away from her anthropological research, Susan Stonich engages in a familiar and common hobby – “I’m a weaver.”

“The creative part of my life is weaving and textile design, I’m very interested in that,” she said.

But the nature of weaving, interlacing different threads to create a larger, coherent fabric, is integral to understanding Stonich’s career as an anthropological researcher and political ecologist. “I really do research that tends to integrate all those previously diverse fields.”

At the core of both Stonich’s research and pedagogical approach is a belief in the value and necessity of interdisciplinary perspectives. “We have to do a better job from the undergraduate level to the graduate level to train our students to be truly interdisciplinary,” she explained. “Because of the kinds of problems that I look at in my work, an interdisciplinary

Ph.D. Student

by Jessica Fisher

For many of us, when we think of an anthropologist we envision a lovesick hero retrieving artifacts from pillagers while simultaneously running from federal agents, all the while dodging villains in exotic places, and of course the inevitable tumble into a deadly snake pit. Though we may have Spielberg to thank for such stereotypes and the inclusion of anthropology into mainstream (however misleading Indiana Jones is as an archeologist), what he always leaves out is the immeasurable amount of hours anthropologists spend studying, teaching and in many cases trying to secure money for their research.

Perhaps, the latter is less romantic than Hollywood’s spin, but for Wes Stoner, an Anthropology Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kentucky, it has been those grueling hours spent behind a computer that enabled his

By all accounts, Allen Turner is a long way from home.

A University of Kentucky alumnus twice over, Turner is in Guadalajara, Mexico and about to complete a program that will allow him to teach English as a foreign language. When he is finished, Turner, 69, and his wife plan to move to Ecuador where they own a small sugar cane farm.

Once in Ecuador, Turner hopes to teach and to research how birds relate to culture.

Meanwhile, he is still serving as a legal consultant to the Gabrieleno Band of Mission Indians who are fighting to be recognized as a tribe by the U.S. government.

The anthropologist, lawyer and teacher has certainly kept busy since he left the College of Arts & Sciences in 1981.

“They’re all dimensions of what I’ve been able to do in my life so far,” Turner said. “You couldn’t put me in a box if you tried.”

Turner is

Anthropology Senior

For Sophronia Caress Taylor, attending college was never really a dream, it was an expectation.

Descended from a line that includes graduates of Mississippi Valley State University, Mississippi State University and Alcorn State University, Taylor knew college was in her future, but the college she attended was not set in stone. Because she had lived part of her life in Laurel, Miss., Taylor had aspirations of attending a historically black college like Alcorn State or Spelman. However, having graduated from Mason County High School in Northern Kentucky, she was placed in perfect position to study at the University of Kentucky.

Taylor came to UK on a William C. Parker scholarship and has not looked back. In searching for a college home on the UK campus, Taylor found the College of Arts and Sciences to be one of the more

There is one 12 or 13-year-old female, with great dental work, that he can’t get out of his mind. This is a case that haunts him.

“I can’t ID her,” said Bill Bass, one of the world’s leading forensic anthropologists and alumnus of UK’s College of Arts and Sciences. “There are cold cases, but they are never really that cold. We are constantly talking about them and there are new techniques that are coming out all the time that may break the case.”

Originally from Stephens City, Va., Bass came to Kentucky in the early 50s after being

Anthropology Doctorate Student

Cynthia Kline Isenhour grew up in Germantown, Ohio, where she graduated from Valley View High School. She was raised one of two daughters primarily by her mother, who, though earning a modest salary, did everything in her power to provide more than just life’s necessities for her children.

“I suspect that my mother’s occasional conflation of love and material goods influenced my decision to study marketing in college (at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio),” Isenhour said.

Isenhour’s education at Miami U. and from her mother gave Isenhour an understanding of how buying and giving could be productive, “helping to create and foster social relations of love and mutual support.”

As a result of this newfound realization, Isenhour studied anthropology at the graduate level at Colorado State University.