Faculty

Faculty in the IDPAS are elected, and to be elected, a faculty member must be active in research and graduate education. All IDPAS faculty are important researchers in their areas of interest, and this translates into matchless opportunities for students to develop research. The IDPAS is perhaps best known as a center for the study of human evolution, and this reputation was built on important interpretations of hominid locomotion and systematics that were published in the 1980s and early 1990s. We have continued to add faculty to this core group so that the IDPAS retains its international stature in studies of primate and human locomotion and systematics. Stone Age archaeology was then added to complement this focus on human evolution. We also have a strong group of archaeologists focusing on both early farming societies and the complex societies and empires of the ancient Near East.

In the 1990s, four primatologists were added to the IDPAS faculty. We now have one of the strongest programs in primate behavior anywhere in the world. Cultural anthropology has strengths in Africa, Indonesia, and the Mediterranean. We hope to build cultural anthropology further in the near future.

A student should choose a graduate program based on topical coverage, student support, and faculty quality. Faculty quality is measured by publication, citation to their work, and success at securing external grants to support research. The National Research Council (NRC) regularly gathers quantitative data on these three measures of faculty quality and publishes those results. During the last NRC survey, the IDPAS was rated first among anthropology doctoral programs in the United States in publications, citations, and grant dollars per faculty member. By these measures, our faculty are the best in the nation.

The web pages of the IDPAS faculty are sorted by subfield.