Graduate Students

Manuel Calongos Curotto

Manuel received his bachelor’s degree from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Peru, in 2015. He is interested how the different Andean societies experienced change in their social organization as a result of the Inca expansion and conquest of the Andean territories. Specifically, Manuel research focuses in analyzing the differences in the management of territory during the Late Intermediate Period (AD 900 – 1476) and the Late Horizon (AD 1476 – 1532) in the Cañete valley, Lima, Peru. He wants to understand the social and political changes the local inhabitants of the Cañete valley experience after the Inca conquest of the valley.

Degrees and Education

BA - Archaeology - Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (2015)

Victor Gonzales Avendano

Jose Victor Gonzales Avendaño is a PhD student in Archaeology, focused on Latin American Archaeology at the University of Pittsburgh. 

I received my initial training in archaeology from the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco (UNSAAC) where I obtained my B.S. in Archaeology in 2010 and Licentiate as an archaeologist in 2012. I have worked, support and directed several Archeological Research Projects that covered surveys, excavations and material analysis, mostly in the Cuzco Area covering a time frame from 1000 B.C. to the 16th century.

My research aims to explain the construction, transformation and reinforce of identities caused the impact of complex societies with hegemonic characteristics on local people in the Cuzco region, through material analysis, urban planning strategies and funerary practices.    

 

Degrees and Education

Bachelor in Archaeology degree given by the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco (2010)
Licentiate in Archaeology degree given by the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco (2012)

Dafne Lastra

I am a sociocultural anthropologist enrolled in the Joint Degree Program PhD in Anthropology (focus on medical anthropology) and MPH in Behavioral and Community Health Sciences. My current research interests are in the provision of medical care for Amazonian indigenous peoples, public health and inequities, anthropology of the state, and humanitarianism in Peru. I am particularly interested in how indigenous peoples view and interact with the Peruvian state through the healthcare system.

These interests come from my previous experience teaching courses in medical anthropology, working and researching on topics related to child malnutrition and anemia, intercultural education with indigenous youth, intercultural health, tuberculosis and maternal health, and climate change and contamination of water sources among indigenous communities in the Amazonian region in Peru.

In the past, I have been awarded a young researchers fellowship by SEPIA (a research organization that promotes and funds research projects on agrarian, rural and environmental topics) to conduct ethnographic research focused on family strategies among small coffee farmers, their articulation to the market in Peru, and published articles based on this and my previous research for my B.A. thesis.

Degrees and Education

Postgraduate Diploma, Interculturality and Amazonian Indigenous Peoples, Antonio Ruiz de Montoya University, Peru (2015)
B.A. Social Sciences, Anthropology Major, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (2012)

Research

2018 - CLAS Field Research Grant (Center for Latin American Studies, University of Pittsburgh)

2017-2018 - Arts & Sciences Graduate Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh

2013 - SEPIA Young Researchers Grant (Permanent Seminar in Agrarian Studies, Peru)

Courtney Besaw

Courtney Besaw is a historical archaeologist who focuses on Latin American archaeology.

She primarily works on the coast of Belize studying the colonial period. She is interested in studying ethnogenesis (the continuation or emergence of new identities) and assimilation of immigrant peoples to northern Belize following the Caste War of Yucatan. Her interests also include “illegal” settlements, household archaeology, and identity.

 

Degrees and Education

BS in Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona
BS in Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona

Awards

2017-2018 Graduate Fellowship in Latin American Archaeology
2019-2020 Graduate Fellowship in Latin American Archaeology

Ryan Smith

Ryan is interested in studying the organization and management of large-scale social and economic interaction networks in non-state societies and how these networks relate to social identity, conflict, subsistence, and shifts in political centralization. His dissertation research will explore a complex system of resource exchange and ritual interaction which connected highlands and lower-lying eastern valleys in the central Andes during late prehispanic periods (AD 1000-1530). One of the major goals of this research is to understand the development of these interaction networks in the Late Intermediate Period, a time marked by political segmentation and internecine conflict ushered by the fall of the Wari and Tiwanaku states around AD 1000 and lasting until the expansion of the Inca empire in the fifteenth century.