linguistic anthropology lab
@ucsd
A wide range of students participate in our workshop series, but the core Lab members are:
Zhané Gaillard (entered 2021; Linguistic Anthropology) holds a B.A. in Anthropology and African American Studies from the University of South Carolina. She is interested in Black American language varieties, raciolinguistics, conceptions of identity and authenticity, hierarchies of power, linguistic reappropriation, and social media.
Michael Hillyer (entered 2020; Linguistic Anthropology) holds an M.A. in Linguistic Anthropology from UCSD and a B.A. in Anthropology and Linguistics, with a minor in Communications, from the University of New Mexico. His research interests include Kumiay/Kumeyaay (Tipai) language reclamation, language ideology, and Indigenous recognition and self-determination in the US/Mexico border region.
Drew Kerr (entered 2019; Psychological/Medical Anthropology) is concerned with the ways poetry moves, feel, and matters. Drew also explores questions about publics, crowds, and the ways in which these anthropological categories unfold into one another. To explore these interests, he conducts research in India that dwells with and in Urdu poetry. He is interested in semiotics, aesthetics, and Urdu studies.
Damini Pant (entered 2019; Sociocultural Anthropology) holds an M.A. in Literature (University of Delhi) and an M.Phil. in Women's Studies (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai). Her dissertation research combines historical and ethnographic methods to examine the production and uptake of imaginaries of the Kumaon Himalayas as a remote landscape. Her research approaches remoteness as a semiotic resource and investigates how diversely positioned stakeholders resource remoteness towards different social and political ends.
Alicia Wright (entered 2017; Linguistic Anthropology) holds a B.A. in Anthropology and Linguistics from the University of Chicago. Her research interests include American Sign Language and its dialects, sign language interpreting, issues of race, sexuality, and language, and language ideology.
Rachel Emerine Hicks (entered 2014; Linguistic and Sociocultural Anthropology) conducts fieldwork in Solomon Islands. Her dissertation project explores how secondary schooling in Solomon Islands impacts the opportunities for youth after schooling and influences their connections with their home communities, cultural values, identities, and language use.
If you have taken a graduate course in linguistic anthropology and find yourself attending the workshop regularly, ask about Lab membership!
The alumni of the PhD program in Linguistic Anthropology are:
Aida Ribot Bencomo, PhD 2019
Castells in the Construction of a Catalan Community: Body, Language, and Identity Amidst Catalonia's National Debate
Sara Goico, PhD 2019
The Social Lives of Deaf Youth in Iquitos, Peru
Haleema Welji, PhD 2017
Learning to be "Good": The Ethics of Socialization and the Socialization of Ethics in Amman, Jordan
Melanie McComsey, PhD 2015
Bilingual Spaces: Approaches to Linguistic Relativity in Bilingual Mexico
Candler Hallman, PhD 2014
Debating Death: Discourse and Legitimacy in the Northern Irish victims’ rights movement
Elizabeth Peacock, PhD 2011
Growing Out of a Postsocialist World: Teenagers Reconstructing Identities in Western Ukraine
Eric Hoenes, PhD 2008
Ideologies of Language and Gesture among Q'eqchi'-Maya Mainstream and Charismatic Catholics