Accomplishments: Department of Anthropology

Barbara Roth (Anthropology), Ph.D. student Danielle Romero (Anthropology), Scott Nicolay, and Roger Anyon published "The Elk Ridge Community in the Mimbres Pueblo World" in the most recent issue of American Antiquity. 
Paul Vincent Ruma (Anthropology) was an invited speaker at California State University, East Bay’s Music, Identity & Wellness Summit, held May 1, 2026. Ruma led a story-driven lecture and interactive workshop on mental health, resilience, and identity through Hip Hop culture, incorporating his co-authored book These Are the Breaks! as part of…
Paul Vincent Ruma (Anthropology) presented at the 2026 European Hip Hop Studies Network Conference, “Things Done Changed,” held March 18-21, 2026, at the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands. His presentation, “There’s No Book: Master Practitioner Publishing as Breaking’s Knowledge Infrastructure,” examined the gap between embodied cultural…
Jennifer Byrnes (Anthropology) co-authored "Buckle Rib Fractures Are More Than a Pleural Surface Phenomenon: A Case Report and Literature Review" in Forensic Anthropology. Drawing on a literature review and a forensic case example, the authors explore how buckle rib fractures are defined and offer recommendations to practitioners for more accurate…
Lisa Johnson (Anthropology) recently co-presented at the 20th annual Tulane Maya Symposium on "Maya Cities," a talk titled "Households, Neighborhoods, and the Dynamics of Urbanism at Lakamha'."
Lisa Johnson (Anthropology) recently published a co-edited volume, "The Urban Questions: Interdisciplinary & Multiscalar Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City," through the University of Utah Press, Available Dec. 19, 2025, ISBN: 978-1-64769-228-5. 
Paul Vincent Ruma (Anthropology) was an invited speaker at the international symposium “Faire connaissance(s): Hip hop dances as fields of research and invention,” held December 4–6 at La Villette in Paris and organized by the Centre national de la danse (CN D), a national institution of the French Ministry of Culture. Ruma’s presentation, “From…
Derek Boyd (Anthropology) published an open-access article in Early View in the International Journal of Paleopathology titled, "An Intersectional and Bayesian Investigation of Pleural Disease in Industrializing England (1700-1857CE)," (2026). In this article, Boyd combines intersectionality theory with Bayesian linear modeling to map the burden…
Gabriela Oré Menéndez (Anthropology) published an article in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory titled "Agricultural Infrastructure Detection Through Multispectral Satellite Remote Sensing and PeruSAT-1 Images in Huarochirí, Peru" (2025). In this article, Oré Menéndez develops a systematic methodological approach called "sequential…
Iván Sandoval-Cervantes (Anthropology) published a chapter in Spanish titled, "Cuidados," (Care) in the edited volume Glosario Etnográfico de las Ruralidades Mexicanas (Ethnographic Glossary of Mexican Ruralities), edited by Paola Velasco Santos and Hernán Salas Quintanal (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México). In this chapter, Sandoval-…
Nicholas Barron (Anthropology) attended the American Society for Ethnohistory meeting in San Antonio, Texas, where he organized the panel titled, "Historicizing Politically Engaged Scholarship in Native North America." The panel explored the conceptual tools needed to examine prior instances in which anthropologists and ethnohistorians entered the…
Paul Vincent Ruma (Anthropology) co-authored These Are the Breaks! (Scholars of Style, 2025), a practitioner-led book on Hip Hop culture and cultural preservation, documenting the life and impact of world-renowned DJ and breaking champion Lino “Lean Rock” Delgado.