Faculty

Photo Faculty Member Research Interests
Dr. James Beveridge
Dr. James Beveridge
Visiting Assistant Professor
(828) 262-6381
349C Anne Belk Hall
(PhD University of Texas-Austin 2021) Environmental anthropology, multispecies studies, Amazonian Indigenous people with focus on Quichua-speaking Runa, Indigenous resistance movements, ethnographic video and sensory ethnography, community-engaged research in Grayson Highlands, studying feral ponies. Ecuador; TIPNIS Bolivia; Appalachia.
Jon Carter
Dr. Jon H. Carter
Associate Professor
(828) 262-6380
346 Anne Belk Hall
(PhD Columbia University 2012) Political anthropology, anthropology of violence, borders and immigration, incarceration and surveillance, media theory, fictocriticism and ethnographic writing; Honduras, Latin America
Dr. Stephen Christopher
Dr. Stephen Christopher
Adjunct Assistant Professor
(828) 262-2295
348 Anne Belk Hall
(PhD Syracuse University 2018) Ethnicity; Religion; South Asia
Dr. Sophia C. Dent
Visiting Assistant Professor
(828) 262-7784
324 Anne Belk Hall
(PhD University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 2020) Biological anthropology, skeletal biology and osteology, stable isotope analysis, nutrition, food security, periodontal disease and dental calculus, physiological plasticity; Southeastern North America
Dr. Georgia Fox
Dr. Georgia Fox
Adjunct Assistant Professor
(828) 262-2295
348 Anne Belk Hall
(PhD Texas A&M University 1998) Archaeology of British colonialism, early consumerism and capitalism, economic anthropology, historical archaeology, African Diaspora and plantation archaeology, environmental archaeology, museum and material culture studies, preservation and conservation of archaeological and ethnographic materials, underwater and maritime archaeology. Caribbean, Eastern Mediterranean, Greece, Israel, Netherlands, and maritime California.
Dr. Gokee
Dr. Cameron Gokee
Associate Professor
(828) 262-6752
330A Anne Belk Hall
(PhD University of Michigan 2012) African archaeology, village communities, borderlands, spatial analysis, ceramic analysis, archaeology of the contemporary
Dr. Seth B. Grooms
Dr. Seth B. Grooms
Assistant Professor
(828) 262-2283
328A Anne Belk Hall
(PhD Washington University in St. Louis 2022) Eastern Woodlands of pre-contact North America, earthen monumentality, Poverty Point, archaeology of the Archaic period, the Lower Mississippi Valley, hunter-gatherer studies, American Indian epistemologies and philosophies, cultural landscapes, the role of ritual in identity formation, performance, flexible social organization among non-agrarian societies, geoarchaeology, chronological modeling; Southeastern U.S.
Tiffany Jones
Dr. Tiffany M Jones
Adjunct Assistant Professor
(828) 262-2295
348 Anne Belk Hall
(PhD University of South Carolina 2020) Linguistic Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Urban Anthropology, Ethnopoetics, African American Studies; Southern U.S.
Dr. Neşe Kaya Özkan
Dr. Neşe Kaya Özkan
Assistant Professor
(828) 262-2268
349H Anne Belk Hall
(PhD University of Arizona 2023) Language and environmental politics; language ideologies; language activism; language loss; language reclamation; environmental justice; anthropology of environmentalism; multilingualisms; language, ethnicity, and race; multispecies ethnography; Middle East, Hemshins, Turkey
Dr. Geoff Kelley
Adjunct Assistant Professor
(828) 262-2295
348 Anne Belk Hall
(PhD University of Georgia 2013) Conservation anthropology, transboundary conservation, political ecology, historical ecology; U.S. - Mexico border
Dr. Marc Kissel
Assistant Professor
(828) 262-6713
349A Anne Belk Hall
(PhD University of Wisconsin-Madison 2014) The evolution of modern humans and the processes by which hominins became human; the evolutionary arc of human warfare, Neandertal behavior; quantitative genetics; computer modeling; semiotics; paleoanthropological theory
Susan Lappan
Dr. Susan Lappan
Professor
(828) 262-8909
349E Anne Belk Hall
(PhD New York University 2005) Biological anthropology, primate behavior, ecology, conservation biology, small apes; Indonesia, Malaysia
Dr. Krista A. Lewis
Professor
Department Chair
(828) 262-7404
349J Anne Belk Hall
(PhD University of Chicago 2005) Arabian archaeology, interrelationships of food, politics, environment, and trade; archaeological heritage preservation and engagement; public archaeology; ancient urbanism; Arabian Peninsula, Oman, Yemen
Margaret Morley
Dr. Margaret Morley
Visiting Assistant Professor
(828) 262-6383
349G Anne Belk Hall
(Ph.D. Indiana University 2023) Economic anthropology; attention; anthropology of aesthetics, the senses, and the body; media capitalism; global studies; coloniality; gender; Orientalism; vibration; belly dance; beauty standards and aesthetic labor; the Middle East and North Africa
Timothy J. Smith, Ph.D.
Dr. Timothy J. Smith
Professor
(828) 262-8473
344 Anne Belk Hall
(PhD University at Albany, SUNY 2004) Political and legal anthropology, governance and ethnicity in Latin America, democracy and electoral politics, historical ethnography, environmental subjectivities, indigenous languages and pedagogy (Kaqchikel Mayan and Napo Kichwa), immigration; Guatemala, Ecuador, Spain, and France
Dr. Christina Verano Sornito
Assistant Professor
(828) 262-6429
349D Anne Belk Hall
(PhD Columbia University 2015) Anthropology of religion, magic and sorcery, hauntology, climate change in the Pacific, debates across ontology and non-Western/Indigenous frameworks, trajectories in autoethnographic and multimodal ethnography, transnational labor, media studies, visual anthropology, anthropology of sound, psychoanalysis, Central European avant-gardes; The Philippines, Southeast Asia, U.S. Empire/Imperialism
Dr. Alice P. Wright
Associate Professor
Department Honors Director
(828) 262-6384
322A Anne Belk Hall
(PhD University of Michigan 2014) Southeastern archaeology, pre-Columbian interaction, Hopewell, the built environment and monumentality, landscapes, GIS, archaeological geophysics, community and applied archaeology, heritage management; Southern Appalachians, Southeastern U.S.