Research Associates

Drew Chastain

Drew Chastain is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Loyola University in New Orleans. His main research interests are life meaning and spirituality. He also explores the meaningfulness of things apart from their contribution to a meaningful "life" - for instance, the meaningfulness of attachment to other people.

Clifford Dacso

Cliff Dacso is an internist and infectious disease clinicians. His research interest focus on understanding how externalities impact gene transcription in experimental systems. He is the co-founder of the Institute for Collaboration in Health, an C3 working on aspects of One Health.

James G. Enloe

James Enloe received his BA in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979, his MA and PhD in Anthropology from the University of New Mexico in 1981 and 1991. He has archaeological field experience going back to 1963 (!), and has worked in Georgia, New Jersey, Missouri, New Mexico, Colorado, Alaska, France, Russia, and Namibia. Most of his research deals with zooarchaeological and spatial analyses of Middle and Upper Paleolithic rock-shelter and open-air sites, but he is particularly skilled at excavation procedures and concerned with assessing the integrity of archaeological deposits. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Iowa.

Diego Figueroa

Dr. Figueroa is an assistant professor in the School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. His research focuses on how oceanographic processes, anthropogenic effects and climate change impact the biodiversity and connectivity of marine habitats. The near-shore region of the South Texas Gulf Coast is one of the least-studied areas in the entire Gulf of Mexico. Dr. Diego Figueroa’s work focuses on establishing a baseline of oceanographic and biological characteristics of this region to serve as a foundation for long-term oceanographic monitoring. His research aims to assess the effects of increased stress on this coastal environment from rising human use and climate change and to provide valuable information for policymakers and managers to mitigate negative impacts and promote the sustainable use of resources in the Gulf of Mexico.

Linda Howie

Dr. Linda Howie brings more than 15 years experience in the application of scientific methods to the investigation of ancient and historic artifacts and buildings, and their interpretation. Her area of speciality is determining the geologic origins of pottery and stone artifacts, reconstructing ancient and historic production technologies, and tracing patterns of resource extraction, fabrication processes and exchange networks. Howie holds an Honors B.A. in Classical Studies and Anthropology and an M.A. in Anthropology (Bioarchaeology) from the University of Western Ontario, Canada; a Material-Engineering-based M.Sc. in Archaeomaterials from the University of Sheffield, U.K.; and a Ph.D. in Archaeology and Archaeological Science (The University of Sheffield). Howie is a recipient of the prestigious Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships and is a Commonwealth Scholar. In 2011, Howie founded HD Analytical Solutions, a professional consulting laboratory specializing in materials characterization research and paleoenvironmental reconstruction, with academic and industry clients worldwide.

Nathaniel Kitchel

Nathaniel Kitchel is an anthropological archaeologist who received a B.A. in Anthropology and a B.S. in Crop and Soil Science from Colorado State University in 2005, his M.A. in Anthropology from Northern Arizona University in 2008, and his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Wyoming in 2015. Nathaniel specializes in geoarchaeology, particularly geochemical sourcing, as applied to the archaeology of the glaciated northeastern United States. Nathaniel is currently the co-director of the Munsungun Quarries Exploration Project. This project is dedicated to understanding the use of several lithic raw material sources in the vicinity of Munsungun Lake, Maine, and how these sources fit into broader patterns of lithic raw material acquisition and transport, particularly during the fluted point period of the region. This project also seeks to understand how human populations in this region adapted their technology and mobility strategies to changing climate, particularly rapid warming at the end of the Younger Dryas climate interval (~12,900 – 11,500 cal BP). Beyond his focus on the Northeast, Nathaniel has also worked on archaeological projects throughout the United States, as well as in Mongolia and Peru.

Scott Maddux

Scott Maddux’s research focuses on human evolution during the Middle and Late Pleistocene. He is particularly interested in the distinctive craniofacial morphologies of Neandertals and modern humans, and the developmental, adaptive, and stochastic processes which produced them. His research program currently includes investigations of climatic adaptation in the upper respiratory system, form and function of the paranasal sinuses, and the impact of allometry on facial biomechanics. This research involves a variety of techniques and approaches, including linear and geometric morphometric analyses of human skeletal remains, medical imaging modalities, and experimental modeling in non-human species.

Grant E. McCall

Grant E. McCall (no relation to the Executive Director, Grant S. McCall) is a social anthropologist who has done research on the cultures and development of islands, proposing the concept of "Nissology" that he defines as "The study of islands on their own terms". Most abidingly, he investigates the peoples and cultures of the Pacific Islands, especially of Eastern Polynesia and within that, Rapanui (Easter Island). He is in the Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney.

Reinaldo Morales, Jr.

Born and educated in Virginia, Morales received his Ph.D. in pre-Columbian art history from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2002. His research focuses on the prehistoric rock art and living indigenous arts of the Brazilian Amazon, the pre-Columbian art of the Caribbean, and the rock art of the American Southwest. Particular research interests include how the arts of indigenous American societies reflect larger environmental issues such as the onset of the last interglacial period and the peopling of the Americas, the effects of the mid-Holocene climate on Archaic art and ritual in semi-arid regions of North and South America, and the widespread interaction spheres and artistic fluorescence in the Mesoamerican Caribbean just prior to the Little Ice Age. Morales has presented and chaired sessions at national and international art history and archaeology conferences. His publications address rock art and aesthetic reception, style and Brazilian rock art, and Caribbean cave art vis-à-vis Mesoamerican ritual.

Peggy Petrzelka

I am a Professor in the Dept. of Sociology at Utah State University. I received my M.S. in Rural Sociology and PhD in Sociology from Iowa State University. My BA is in Political Science from College of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN. My research interests focus on the interrelationships between the physical and social environment in a number of settings—from rural communities in the US to rural migrant communities in Spain and Morocco. I am currently working with American Farmland Trust, researching non-operating landowners of agricultural land—a growing group of landowners, yet a group whose voice has been invisible to both researchers and natural resource agencies. A second dominant area of my research currently focuses on the social impacts of hydraulic fracturing that has occurred in the Eagle Ford Shale region of Texas, and Vernal, Utah, an area also experiencing increased hydraulic fracturing activity. I have spent several years in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco as a Peace Corps Volunteer and Fulbright Scholar, and speak Moroccan Arabic (with a bit of Imazighen thrown in). And I am the very proud parent of Wonder Dog Beezer and three chickens, and the proud aunt of nine nieces and nephews. I enjoy odd numbers, hiking, gardening and traveling.

Enzo Rossi

Enzo Rossi an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam, the co-editor of the European Journal of Political Theory, and the principal investigator of the Dutch National Science Organisation-funded Vidi project "Legitimacy Beyond Consent" (2016-2021). His PhD is in philosophy, from the University of St Andrews and his general research focus is the relation between the descriptive and the normative study of society, and my main current project is a realist critical theory of legitimacy.

Jesse Saloom

Jesse Saloom is a philosopher at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. After receiving his M.Sc. in Philosophy and Public Policy from the London School of Economics, Jesse’s focus shifted toward evolutionary psychology. A central theme of his research is the evolution of morality and the role natural selection plays on our moral intuitions.

Nancy A. Shields

Nancy A. Shields is Founders Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and she received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. She has published articles in the areas of domestic violence and sociology of education. My major theoretical interests are in the areas of adult life development, attribution theory, role theory and theories of self presentation.

James Andrew Whitaker James Andrew Whitaker (Ph.D., Tulane University) is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research focuses on the ethnography, ethnology, and ethnohistory of indigenous societies in South America (particularly Guyana) and the Caribbean. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork with the Makushi in Guyana and has undertaken archival research in Guyana, the U.K., the U.S., and Barbados. His major research and teaching areas include Amazonian ethnology, Amerindian perspectivism, historical ecology, ontological anthropology, and the ethnohistory of the Guianas.

John Whittaker

John Whittaker (BA Cornell U. 1975, PHD U. of Arizona 1984) has been teaching at Grinnell College since 1984. He considers himself an anthropological archaeologist, which means that while he prefers working with ancient people, he considers himself free to snoop into any aspect of human life, and all people living and dead are fair game. With Kathy Kamp and Grinnell College field schools, he works with prehistoric sites near Flagstaff, Arizona, and the prehistoric Southwest is his research heartland. John's technical expertise is in prehistoric technologies, especially flintknapping and stone tool analysis, early agriculture, and atlatls, or spearthrowers. Coach Whittaker also promotes the Grinnell College Raging Cows, the world's first collegiate atlatl team, which hosts an annual spear throwing competition.

Karl Widerquist

Karl Widerquist is an Associate Professor at SFS-Qatar, specializing in political philosophy. His research is mostly in the area of distributive justice—the ethics of who has what. He holds two doctorates—one in Political Theory form Oxford University (2006) and one in Economics from the City University of New York (1996). He has written or edited eight books, as well as more than a twenty-five scholarly articles and book chapters. He is the author of Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No (Palgrave Macmillan 2013) and he is coeditor of Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research (Wiley-Blackwell 2013), Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Examining its Suitability as a Model (Palgrave Macmillan 2012), Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World (Palgrave Macmillan 2012); and, with Grant S. McCall, Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy and The Prehistory of Private Property (Edinburgh University Press 2017 and 2021 respectively). He was also a founding editor of the journal Basic Income Studies.

Alexander D. Woods

Alexander D. Woods received his PhD from the University of Iowa in 2011, and has been working for Colorado State University's Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands since 2013. He is currently serving in the Wisconsin Field Office as the Cultural Resources Projects Manager for Fort McCoy. His research interests include the history and prehistory of Western Wisconsin, the environmental and archaeological stewardship of military lands, the study and quantification of lithic raw material quality, and its relationship to the economic realities of stone tool production and use.