Graduate Research
Four graduate students presented at the Midwest Primate Interest Group conference in Highland Heights, Kentucky:
- Brianna Abba (insectivory and habitat use in Weddell’s saddleback tamarins in Bolivia)
- Meghan Hanson (social foraging in juvenile Weddell’s saddleback tamarins)
- Maire O’Malley (nutritional niche separation amongst sympatric threatened lemurs)
- Bellamy Taylor (Fixed or flexible: Do closely related lemur species diverge in their nutritional niche?)
Graduate Student Yu Tsao presented a paper entitled “Becoming Christian: Gendered Dimensions of Religious Conversion among Hmong Women in Northern Thailand,” at the 2025 Southeast Asian Studies Student Conference hosted by NIU’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies (March 29).
Graduate students Annalisa Amber (a comparative study of Moche Fineware distribution within the Moche Valley of Peru) and recent M.A. alumna Bailey Raab (paleoethnobotanical remains from the Fort Ancient Turpin site)presented at the 2025 Society for American Archaeology meeting in Denver, Colorado.
Graduate Research/Conference Fund Grantees
We recently awarded six Graduate Research Awards to support the M.A. research of our outstanding students. Thanks to all the alumni and friends of the department who answered our fundraising call this past year – these are the projects your generous donations are supporting.
- Rowan Carter: Indigenous Futurities in Chicagoland & Implications for Urban Life
- Mehrab Hasan: Understanding Social Relationships and Kinship in Western Hoolock Gibbons (Hoolock hoolock) in Lawachara National Park (LNP), Bangladesh
- Bellamy Taylor: Validating a Non-Invasive Method to Assess Protein Absorption Capabilities of Diademed Sifakas (Propithecus Diadema) in the Tsinjoarivo-Ambalaomby Protected Area
- Edgar Villeda: The Role of the Gut Microbiome in the Dietary Adaptations of Diademed Sifaka to Tannin Rich Foods
- Rokibul Islam: Humanitarian Organizations and its Strain: Analyzing the Impact of Humanitarian Aid Agencies on Host Communities in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh
- Ruth Otaigboria: Cultural Models of Long COVID: A Comparative Anthropological Study of Illness Narratives among Nigerian Diaspora and Mainstream American Communities
