This year’s Student Luncheon is a hybrid event. The Zoom call will occur from 12:00-1:30pm CST. You will receive the Zoom link by sign-up for the student luncheon via conference registrants that are Student or Special Members. This talk will be recorded and provided to all other conference attendees virtually after the event.
Thursday October 27th from 12:00pm until 1:30pm (CST)
A Bioarchaeology of the Self
Aja M. Lans
This talk discusses how my identity as a Black anthropologist influences and strengthens my work as a bioarchaeologist. My research focuses on the histories of Black people whose bodies have been curated in anthropological skeletal collections. Such studies require an understanding of the ethical implications of working with human remains and descendant communities in ways that are rarely sufficiently addressed in anthropology. Accordingly, my research and writing are informed by a broader body of social theory drawn from Black feminism, critical race theory, and the history of science and medicine. I will discuss how I developed my research topics and the obstacles I encountered during the process.
Aja Lans is a postdoctoral fellow in Harvard University’s Inequality in America Initiative. She completed her PhD in Anthropology at Syracuse University in 2021, where she concentrated in historical archaeology and cultural heritage preservation. Her dissertation and publications integrate Black feminist and critical race theory with bioarchaeological investigations. In her work, she traces the long history of violence against Black women in the United States by merging skeletal data with archival resources. Her research has been supported by the Smithsonian Institution, the Ford Foundation, and Wenner-Gren Foundation. Her other interests include the ethics of museum collections, the objectification of human remains, and the history of race.
Preliminary Schedule (Central Standard Time)
12:00pm – arrive for food / log in to Zoom
12:15pm – Talk by Dr. Aja Lans
1:00pm – Question and Answer period