About Me

I was born in Indianapolis, Indiana where my father was stationed. At some point (probably at several points) I visited The Children's Museum of Indianapolis which has an Egyptian mummy on display. I liked the mummy and decided that I wanted to be an archaeologist when I grew up. I've never wanted to be anything else. My family spent some time in Leavenworth, Kansas before settling in Columbus, Georgia.

Columbus is a mill town that rests on the last (or first) bit of the Chattahoochee river that is navigable. Columbus was the home of Ma Rainey the 'Mother of the Blues' and Carson McCullers, a southern gothic author who set her all of her stories of spiritual isolation squarely in my town, and usually at my high school.

Like my Columbus fore-mothers, I pulled out of Georgia as soon as I could. I became entranced by the Archaeology of the Americas and found myself excavating in Belize and Guatemala. I was just nerdy enough to become the president of the undergraduate archaeology club for several years.

In my spare time I became interested in experimental music which allowed me to be nerdy and make some very interesting friends.

After finishing my BA, I followed the suggestion of a friend from Guatemala and ended up in Bolivia excavating at the entrancing site of Tiwanaku. Like so many people seem to do, I fell in love with Bolivia. However, reality intervened, I went back to Boston, and took a job at the Boston University History Department because I needed health insurance.

That job provided me with ample time to think about what I really wanted to be doing which turned out to be a Masters in Illicit Antiquities research. I had been interested in archaeological ethics and law for a little while and my experiences in Guatemala solidified my focus on illicit antiquities. I applied to Cambridge University to study Archaeological Heritage and Museums.

My Mphil was supervised by Dr. Neil Brodie and focused on South American Antiquities Auctions. I decided to stay on at Cambridge, imagining my PhD would be a continuation of this project. Things change, and it isn't!

During the first year of my PhD I was lucky enough to participate in interesting fieldwork on the Greek Islands and in the cloud forest of Ecuador (I do love jungles). My experiences in Ecuador particularly clarified my thoughts and brought me to my current PhD focus, using Bolivia as a case study for the very modern identity issues that keep me interested in human interest in the past.

Back at Cambridge I decided that I had enough of the strange divisions that exist(ed?) in the Archaeology department. I first joined the committee of The Archaeological Review from Cambridge, a long-running postgraduate journal produced by the department. Almost instantly, I was editing a volume of this journal with the glorious Tera Pruitt entitled Invention and Reinvention: Perception in Archaeological Practice which would only cost you nine pounds to buy.

I also co-founded the Archaeology Graduate Society, which is mostly an excuse for the grads in our department is mix and mingle across the discipline. We also host a successful seminar series. Outside of the Archaeology Department, I was elected Vice President of the Trinity Hall Graduate Society which meant that I represented the graduate student body at a variety of college governance meetings, helped manage the graduate budget and was in charge of a number of large social functions.

In what little spare time I had, I volunteered for a couple of years at the Amnesty International Book Shop in Cambridge where I was in charge of the History, Archaeology, and Regional studies sections. Working at the shop has been an amazing experience filled with brilliant people: I learned so much there. I also spend a strange amount of time crocheting and very sometimes I put my projects up on Ravelry. When I travel, I take photos.

As for personal life, I have an amazingly brilliant boyfriend named Tony who does lovely things for me like get me started on websites, edit my work, and make me cups of coffee. After living in New Zealand for about 9 months, we are in the States, in the Boston area, and looking forward to what may come.