PhD, Anthropology, WSU
Lecturer, Global Campus
Bio
I am a cultural anthropologist and archaeologist with field experience throughout the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii, Middle East, Europe and Central America.
Following a first career in rescue and emergency medicine, I found my passions in the diverse range of methods and practice that anthropology can bring to bear on questions and challenges facing human communities and the environments they share.
I was fortunate to start out by working with phenomenal archaeologists and elders in community-driven work on Maya monumental architecture, spirituality and preservation projects. These early experiences had a profound shaping effect in the years to come, and fostered interests and relationships that have continued on for decades.
Earlier experiences led to applying search and rescue, emergency medical and anthropological skillsets as a rescue and recovery worker at Ground Zero in 2001. Over the years, I have worked with policymakers and communities impacted by disasters including the 2004 Indonesian Tsunami, 7/7 London bombings, 2018 Paradise Camp Fire, and 2022 and 2025 Eastern Kentucky floods.
In 2003, I was one of the first Western anthropologists/archaeologists to enter Iraq after the coalition invasion where I was able to provide the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) with photographic documentation of early-war condition of World Heritage sites including Ur and Babylon. This documentation helped to monitor later impacts of looting, international forces occupation and ISIS operations.
Subsequent ethnographic work included working with spiritual leaders and families in communities targeted by al Qaeda for recruitment operations in Europe. Drawing on scale-free network theory enabled mapping of networks and cells that focused on recruiting youth and candidates in vulnerable populations for ‘higher order’ and martyrdom operations. Similar ethnographic methods and network theories were subsequently applied in investigating white nationalist movements and their political aims in the US.
For the past couple of decades, my work as a cultural anthropologist and archaeologist has primarily focused on identity, language, oral tradition and preservation of cultural resources in Indigenous American communities and shared landscapes in the Subarctic, Northwest, Great Basin and Plateau.
Additional ethnographic work with veterans and families from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Cold War and post-9/11 through present eras focuses on identity, gender, aging, ritual life, and management of wellbeing in the household and through life stage transitions. Long-term projects also include a focus on art, oral history, family structure, and efforts of revitalization in Appalachian resource heritage communities impacted by extreme poverty, collapsed local economies, stereotyping, and climate disasters.
Over the past 25+ years, I have been committed to collaborative, shoulder-to-shoulder work in anthropology with local and shared communities, which is fundamentally grounded in the vital interests of those stakeholders and environments.
Courses
- ANTH / AIS 320 [DIVR] Native Peoples of North America – A holistic exploration of various indigenous peoples and cultures of North America, through the lens of anthropology. (Cross-listed course offered as ANTH 320, AIS 320)
- ANTH / AIS 327
- ANTH / AIS 331 [SSCI] Archaeology of the Americas – Cultures and environments of the Americas from the arrival of the earliest hunter-gatherers to the development of complex civilizations. (Cross listed course offered as ANTH 331, AIS 331.)
- ANTH 350
- ANTH 390
- ANTH 490
Awards
Jack McNassar – winner of the Excellence in Online Teaching Award
