Dr. Chelsea E. Hunter
Dr. Chelsea Hunter is starting as Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Texas. She joined Ohio State’s Anthropology PhD program in 2019. Prior to joining OSU, Chelsea earned her B.A. from Portland State University in 2013. While at PSU, she conducted research on fair trade cocoa farming and social, ecological, and environmental sustainability in Ghana, West Africa. Dr. Hunter went on to earn an MA in Applied Anthropology from San Diego State University in 2017. While there, she worked on an interdisciplinary research project on coral reef resilience in Moorea, French Polynesia. While at SDSU, she was named an Inamori Fellow – a university wide award granted to ten graduate students. Dr. Hunter graduated as the Anthropology Department’s “Outstanding Graduate Student”. Between completing her MA and starting her PhD, Chelsea completed a post-master’s scholarship on resilience and adaptive capacity following the 2015 Nepal Earthquakes. Additionally, she consulted on qualitative data analysis for a project between the US Forest Service and PSU, while also consulting for the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition on research design and data analysis. Dr. Hunter graduated from OSU in May 2024. Her dissertation research examined collaborative biodiversity conservation and management initiatives in Kanaky/New Caledonia and how history, power, and environmental discourses interact to affect conservation and management policy and practice. Her research was funded by the Elizabeth A. Salt Anthropology Travel Award, the OSU Office of International Affairs, and the National Science Foundation. While at OSU, she also was named a 2024 John A. Knauss Marine Policy Legislative Fellow through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Sea Grant program.
Dr. Christopher Brown
Dr. Christopher Brown is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Washington and Lee University. Chris graduated from the Ohio State University in 2019. He holds a BA in political science from Northwestern University and an MA in international studies from the University of Connecticut. His research interests focus on the shifting political cultures of contemporary West Africa, particularly transnational dimensions of governance and political subjectivity. Chris' dissertation examined strangerhood as a distinctive form of political subjectivity in multi-sited ethnography of strangers from the Zongo in Kumasi, New York, Chicago, and Columbus. Chris' research was supported by a Research Experience for Graduate Students grant from the National Science Foundation (2013), the Sonkin Award for International Peace and Understanding (2013) from The Ohio State University, a grant from the Mershon Center (2015), and the Larsen Award from the Department of Anthropology, Ohio State University (2015). In addition to fieldwork in Ghana and New York City, Christopher has worked and studied in Egypt, France and Switzerland.
Dr. Elizabeth Gardiner
Dr. Elizabeth Gardiner Elizabeth completed her BS in Zoology with a minor in Anthropology in 2008 from the Ohio State University. She attended the School for International Training and earned an MA in Intercultural Science, Leadership, and Management. Between 2009 and 2011, she served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali while simultaneously completing her master’s research. She then went back to Ohio State to earn a PhD in Anthropology; during this time, she taught at Denison University and did consulting work in Ethiopia. Currently, she is Senior Evaluator at Apex Evaluation, concentrating on client engagement, technical assistance and evaluation services for school-based health centers throughout New Mexico. This also includes supporting a team of evaluators in evaluation services for a network of youth behavioral health and wellbeing programs.