Dr. Bouchard will be on sabbatical starting late May and will return January 1, 2015

For the past four years, Dr. Bouchard has been conducting research and fieldwork in the Komi Republic in the Russian Federation and  was recently awarded a SSHRC grant to study the French-speaking populations of Prince George and the Peace River Region, Alberta.

Dr. Bouchard states that given his range of interests, he would entertain proposals from students interested in conducting various research topics around the world and in Canada. This would include: an examination of Canada's Russian-speaking populations (Old Believers, Dukhobors, recent immigrants); a study of the Russian-speaking population in Israel; research anywhere in Eastern Europe (the Baltic States, Ukraine, Romania, etc.) or any research proposal examining one of North America's French-speaking populations either in B.C., elsewhere in Canada or anywhere in the world.

At the outset, the research he conducted took for granted the recent invention of nations. However, as new lines of inquiry emerge, he has developed a new theoretical framework for understanding nationhood and other forms of community. Rather than accepting the easy premise that states create nations, he is proposing that other institutions are equally (if not more) important than states in the emergence of national communities. Currently, he is examining the role of the Orthodox Church in the rise of the concept of 'narod' or 'people' in Russian. Other highlights of his research include an examination of graves and the ways in which they are a focus for community among Russians, the concept of the Russian soul and the ways in which this metaphor defines not only Russian nationhood but many others and finally the significance of memorials and museums in defining identity.

Prior to joining UNBC in 1994, Richard Lazenby was an NSERC post-docoral fellow at the University of Guelph, School of Human Biology. His NSERC-funded research areas include primate functional skeletal biology, forensic anthropology, and human ecology and adaptability.

Dr. Lazenby has authored a number of articles in journals, including the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, the American Journal of Human Biology, the Journal of Theoretical Biology, The Anatomical Record, the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, Current Anthropology, Investigative Radiology and the Journal of Forensic Sciences. Dr. Lazenby's current research program addresses the origins of human handedness through a comparative study of geometric morphometric variation in the hand skeleton of human and non-human primates.

He is past-President of the Canadian Association for Physical Anthropology, and is a consulting forensic anthropologist for the Office of the Regional Coroner for northern British Columbia, and with the RCMP 'E' Division, attached to the Missing Women's Task Force in Vancouver.

"Man is a wolf to man."     Boris Pasternak 'Dr. Zhivago'

Dr. M^cDonald has worked with indigenous communities throughout Canada, the circumpolar world, and Oceania.  For over 30 years, Northern British Columbia, Canada has been his area of greatest concentration, especially the area surrounding the City of Terrace where he began a series of studies in 1977 that became the Kitsumkalum Social History Research Projects.

Currently, he is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Chair of the Council of the University of the Arctic.  Previous appointments included Curator of Ethnology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Chair of the innovative First Nations Studies Department and the Department of Anthropology.  He was also an early Director of the UNBC First Nations Centre and the Founding Executive Director of the House of Learning and Applied Research at the Northwest Community College in Terrace. He has served as national president of the Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies and as a member of several international science committees.

Professor McDonald has published scholarly books and articles in English and in Russian translation, a series of children’s cultural books, as well as numerous reports for First Nations, Museums, and governments.  His scholarly work covers such topics as globalization, colonization and decolonization, community-centred methodologies, research ethics, curriculum development, ethnography, ethnohistory, northern studies, archaeology, and biological anthropology. The applied reports cover similar topics but with a focus on policy issues.

Dr. Rahemtulla is an archaeologist with a wide range of research interests. He has been involved in several archaeological projects throughout the coast and interior of British Columbia, and in Eastern Africa. His current geographic foci are the North Pacific Rim, specifically, British Columbia and Siberia. Topical interests include: archaeological theory; lithic and bone technology; zooarchaeology; complex societies; household archaeology; archaeology of human origins; archaeological resource management; Indigenous Peoples and archaeology; and public archaeology.

Current Projects:

• Ancestral First Nations land-use and settlement patterns between 11,000-5,000 years ago on the central coast of British Columbia. Using newly developed techniques and theoretical frameworks, Farid is examining the stone tool technology at the site of Namu, which is located in Heiltsuk Traditional Territory.
• Use of terrestrial mammal bone in coastal archaeological communities. An examination of the way in which land mammal remains in coastal sites are conceptualised by archaeologists.
• Pebble tools and fish processing. Experimental projects to assess the potential of using pebble tool technology to process salmon.The development of early hominid cognition during the Lower Palaeolithic, based on palaeoenvironmental and archaeologic evidence from Eastern Africa.

Dr. Smith's research focuses on landscapes, place and space, the construction and negotiation of cultural identities, and the politics of representation. She explores these concepts primarily in Ireland, in both historic and contemporary time periods. Spatial relations and material culture are central to her research, thus her work bridges many sub-disciplines: cultural anthropology, ethnohistory, and historical archaeology and reaches out to a broader audience that includes geographers and historians.

Her PhD dissertation entitled "Mapping Meanings: Representing Landscapes and Pasts in 19th Century Ireland", focused on the representation of social landscapes and the construction of competing identities on the colonial maps. Her research explores how the landscape and the past have been shaped by and help to shape the social meanings and social relations of power at the local level.

In keeping with these issues of place and identity, Dr. Smith's current research project, funded by the Social Sciences Research Council of Canada (SSHRD), deals with contemporary concerns of changing identity in Ireland within the European Union, and the results of the new urbanization process in Dublin, Ireland. Her interest is in the spatial marginalization of the new influx of refugees and asylum seekers and their experience with racism in Ireland. Specifically, she focuses on how the Irish State spatially engineers the social experiences of asylum seekers in Direct Provision Accommodation Centres, where they are housed for as long as 3-5 years as they await a decision on their refugee status.

Her teaching, like her research, crosses sub-disciplinary boundaries. She has taught widely across all fields of Anthropology: Introductory courses, theory courses and upper level thematic courses, including "Social Inequality", "Feminist Anthropology" and "Landscape, Place and Culture". In all of these she has emphasized the integrated and holistic nature of anthropological material. She is committed to teaching and mentoring both at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Social/Spatial Mapping of Asylum Seeker Centres in Ireland
As part of the larger project "Articulating Place and Identity: Social and Spatial Exclusion/Inclusion of Asylum Seekers in Ireland" this research maps the location of the State controlled asylum seeker Direct Provision Accommodation Centres across Ireland.
For details click here.

Dr. Gibson is an anthropological archaeologist who studies the archaeology of movement. She is an honorary research associate within this department. Her research combines the study of ancient routes of communication with the study of how contemporary humans interact and thus brings together ideas from landscape archaeology, historical archaeology, ethnography and heritage tourism. The underlying premise of this work is that no landscape is a passive canvas that receives our actions without also making its mark on us. How we move, what routes we take and make, say a lot about who we are, our motivations and social relationships.

She has undertaken research in the varied landscapes of the Eastern Mediterranean, the Levant, and now, the interior of British Columbia. As a SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow, her research "The Archaeology of Movement: Reinterpreting Interaction in a Historic Social Landscape" takes an interdisciplinary approach to understand the life cycle of a communication route that is best known for its colonial past. The Harrison-Lillooet Gold rush trail was used by prospectors from 1858 to 1867 to travel to the Fraser and Caribou gold fields. This research reassesses the multiple functions, users, builders and relationships embodied in, and played out, along this route.

Like many in the anthropology department, she believes in the importance of public outreach. She is heavily involved in organizing the Anthropology in Our Backyards lecture series and when possible offers courses within the Continuing Studies program at UNBC that appeal to the general public. For the past six years she has worked with colleagues from Australia leading and guest lecturing cultural tours to the Eastern Mediterranean and currently participates in the Australians Studying Abroad International Scholar Lecture Series.

"Negotiating Space: Routes of Communication in Roman to British Colonial Cyprus"
Read more:  http://theses.gla.ac.uk/271/