Susynne McElrone, a historian studying late-Ottoman Palestine, is interested in rural socioeconomic history, land tenure, and the implementation of property-tenure reforms following the promulgation of the 1858 Land Code. Significantly, Ottoman property-tenure reforms in the second half of the 19th century continue to influence land tenure in the Levant today. They institutionalized individually held, centrally…
Ms. Vivian A. Laughlin is a Ph. D Candidate in the Institute of Archeology at Andrews University with a concentration in Ancient Near Eastern Archeology and Anthropology. She is the Bikai fellow at ACOR for 2017-2018. Her field research, entitled “Serapis in Hisban: A Historical Narrative of Enculturation of an Ancient Jordanian City,” deals with…
Dr. Geoffrey Hughes, a teaching fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics, is an NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) fellow at ACOR for the summer of 2017. The project he is undertaking is titled “Nation and Agnation: Kinship, Conflict, and Social Control in Contemporary Jordan.” Through his project Dr….
Dr. Gary Rollefson, professor emeritus of Anthropology at Whitman College, is a 2017 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) fellow at ACOR. Dr. Rollefson’s NEH Fellowship project, titled “Lithic Technologies and Social Identities: A Comparative Analysis of Chipped Stone Tool Production in Jordan’s Badia,” examines the stone tools associated with the remains of Neolithic houses…
Sarah Islam is a Ph.D. candidate in the History department at Princeton University and a CAORC Fellow at ACOR in the fall of 2016. Her research project, “The Evolution of Blasphemy as Legal Category in Medieval Islamic History,” examines how interpretations of blasphemy—known as sabb— in Islam have varied based on time period, geography and…
Brittany Barrineau is a Ph.D. candidate in Geography at the University of Kentucky and an ACOR-CAORC Fellow in the fall of 2016. Her research project, “Exporting Heritage and Highlighting Politics: Extra Virgin Olive Oil Production in Jordan,” examines how state power, international geopolitics and place based identities converge in the complex relationship between farmers, their…
Dr. Michael Vincente Perez is a professor of anthropology at the University of Washington in Seattle and in the fall of 2016 he is an ACOR-CAORC Senior Fellow. His research project, titled “Surviving Statelessness: Gaza Refugees and the Politics of Living in Jordan,” is focused on the community of Gaza refugees and their descendants in…
How do regular people respond and adapt to “major structural changes that upend normal social processes?” This question is at the heart of Rana B. Khoury’s work, which explores the new “normal” that civilians in Syria have created in response to the Syrian civil war. Inspired to “tell the stories of individuals and communities experiencing…
Reality shifts under an artist’s brush. Are urban communities also transformed by the presence of artists? This is one of the research questions pursued by Dr. Aseel Sawalha, a professor of anthropology at Fordham University in New York City. She is ACOR’s 2016-2017 NEH Fellow, supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), pursuing…
Piotr Makowski is a field archaeologist who has participated in excavations in Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Cyprus, Poland and the Ukraine. He first visited Jordan in 2015 with a small study tour supported by the University of Warsaw. The Pierre and Patricia Bikai Fellowship has enabled Piotr to work on a research project that will contribute…
Catherine Maier is an undergraduate in Anthropology at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. Her passion for geology and archaeology led her to apply for the Groot Fellowship to join excavations at Wadi Qattafi and work with Dr. Gary Rollefson as part of the Eastern Badia Archaeological project. The summer 2016 dig aimed to uncover…
Dr. Suzanne Richard is an ACOR-CAORC post-doctoral fellow in residence at ACOR in the summer and autumn of 2016. A distinguished professor of history and archaeology at Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania, she has been working in Jordan for more than thirty years. A leading expert in the archaeology and history of the Early Bronze…
Austin “Chad” Hill, 2015–2016 CAORC Post Doctorate Fellow Chad Hill preparing to launch a fixed wing drone at Feifa, Jordan 2014 (Photo by Morag Kersel) Chad Hill is an archaeologist who specializes in the rapidly developing field of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-based surveying. He uses aerial photography and 3D photogrammetry to identify archaeological sites, document excavations, and…
José Ciro Martínez, 2015–2016 CAORC Pre-Doctoral Fellow José Ciro Martínez is a pre-doctorate Fellow at ACOR conducting research in Jordan until December 2015. He is completing his Ph.D. in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. Before his ACOR-CAORC fellowship, he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship that gave him the opportunity…