2017 AAA Leadership Fellows Offer Diverse Perspectives Across Anthropology
Katie Kirakosian, Lesley Jo Weaver, and Diana Marsh have been named the 2017 American Anthropological Association (AAA) Leadership Fellows. The AAA’s Leadership Fellows program is designed to provide a unique opportunity for anthropologists beginning their careers to learn about leadership opportunities and to encourage future leadership in the Association. The wide variety of educational and professional backgrounds shared by this year’s Fellows promise to bring exciting new perspectives to Association leadership.
Trained archaeologist Katie Kirakosian is drawn to service opportunities that allow her to have a clear and lasting impact on the future of anthropology. Kirakosian is currently an adjunct lecturer at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where she completed her PhD in 2014. Kirakosian sits on the board of the Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum in Exeter, Rhode Island, co-founded the Society for American Archaeology’s (SAA) Teaching Archaeology Interest Group, and is a coordinating team member for the SAA video project “Archiving the Archaeologists.” Her background in administration and project management will make her a valuable addition to the Leadership Fellows team.
Lesley Jo Weaver is a third-year faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alabama. As a medical and biocultural anthropologist who graduated with a PhD and MPH from Emory University in 2014, Weaver is particularly interested in engaging with AAA leadership who are working to bring biological and applied anthropologists into the fold. Weaver is currently serving on the Society for Medical Anthropology’s membership committee as well as working on an NSF-funded three year collaborative project comparing the relationships between food security and mental health in Brazil, Ethiopia, and Haiti.
Diana Marsh is a museum anthropologist with a PhD from the University of British Columbia who hopes to apply her four-fields training to AAA leadership opportunities. Marsh recently completed a fellowship with the American Philosophical Society Museum and begins a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at the National Anthropological Archives this summer. Her position as a Leadership Fellow will build on her service to the Association as a Council for Museum Anthropology board member.
Each year a group of three to five Leadership Fellows is paired with a mentor chosen from among AAA leadership. Mentors are available to Fellows throughout the year to answer questions related to AAA. Fellows also shadow their mentors at the AAA Annual Meeting. This year’s mentors are Cathy Costin, Professor of Anthropology at California State University, Northridge; Pamela Stone, Director, Culture, Brain and Development Program, Hampshire College; and Keri Brondo, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Memphis.
The Fellows will be honored in an award ceremony at the 116th AAA Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.
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Founded in 1902, the American Anthropological Association, with more than 10,000 members, is the world’s largest professional organization of anthropologists. The Association is dedicated to advancing human understanding and tackling the world’s most pressing problems.
