Ashley Stinnett, is an assistant professor in the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology at Western Kentucky University. She received her Ph.D. from the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Her areas of specialization are linguistic anthropology with a sub-specialty in applied visual ethnography and educational documentary filmmaking. Her research primarily concerns the sociocultural and linguistic processes in which locally centered, historical and traditional knowledge specific to food are realized and put into daily practice. Ashley researches language production in communities of practice in occupational settings and community driven efforts, specifically related to food production. Additionally, she partners with local community organizations utilizing applied anthropological approaches while synchronously incorporating visual anthropology methodologies in both the practice and the production of visual media materials. Her primary research focuses on language practices of heritage butchers in the Southwestern United States. Her most recent project utilizes linguistic and sensory ethnography in a focus on food fermentation.

Ecological practices of daily life have taken on new urgency and approaches as consumer citizens increasingly voice awareness of environmental sustainability in China. This lecture will focus on "everyday ecologies"--personal engagement with social and material worlds to negotiate well-being. 

Prof. Nancy Chen is Chair of the Anthropology Department and an affiliate of East Asian Studies and Feminist Studies at UC/Santa Cruz. Her research interests include Chinese biotechnology, food and medicine, and alternative healing practices. She is author or editor of six books, including China Urban. 

Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology and the UK Confucius Institute.

Ecological practices of daily life have taken on new urgency and approaches as consumer citizens increasingly voice awareness of environmental sustainability in China. This lecture will focus on "everyday ecologies"--personal engagement with social and material worlds to negotiate well-being. 

Professor Nancy Chen is Chair of the Anthropology Department and an affiliate of East Asian Studies and Feminist Studies at UC/Santa Cruz. Her research interests include Chinese biotechnology, food and medicine, and alternative healing practices. She is author or editor of six books, including China Urban. 

Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology and the UK Confucius Institute. 

Comparing ethnographic and agricultural data collected from two neighboring Biangai villages (Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea), one engaged in a small-scale conservation effort and the other stakeholders in a large industrial gold mine, this paper analyzes the linkages between alternative development regimes, agricultural transformation and human-environmental relations. Working the land is not simply about production, but also about knowing the landscape and its products as nodes in human social relations. Mining regimes disentangle the multi-species networks experienced in the garden, and reassemble them into other spaces. Thus, in the mining inspired transformations of agricultural practices, Biangai are also transforming how they experience their own multi-species community – its past, present and future.

Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology Colloquium Series.