Event Details

Hosted by: Will Meyer, PhD (he/him)

Will is a generalist anthropologist at Mercyhurst University who advocates for a transdisciplinary and collaborative “use what works” approach to pursuing the questions that interest us. Trained as a four-field anthropologist and historical ecologist, Will has conducted archaeological, ethnographic, and ecological research in the United States and Europe. He is especially interested in how societies “remember” and “forget” relationships and knowledge from the past, focusing on both landscapes/ecological relationships and on systems of sex, gender, and sexuality.

Including:

Dina Rivera, MA, RPA (they/them, Queer femme, nonbinary)

Dina graduated from the University of South Florida with a degree in Applied Anthropology, specializing in archaeology and forensic anthropology. Their master’s thesis focused on enhancing accessibility through virtual archaeological and cultural resources spaces. Since 2021, they have been serving as the Communications Director for the Register of Professional Archaeologists.

Shawn P. Lambert, PhD (he/him)

Shawn Lambert is an associate professor of anthropology at Mississippi State University in the Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures. Lambert is a southeastern archaeologists with a primary focus in community-engaged and collaborative archaeology within a generative framework to understand late pre-European contact through pre-reconstruction histories. He also specializes in ceramic and iconographic analyses, remote sensing technologies, 3D and augmented realities, organic residue analyses, and making archaeology as inclusive and supportive as possible.

Char completed their BSc, majoring in Environmental Biology (Plant Biology) and minoring in Anthropology, at McGill University in 2019, and their MA in Anthropology, specializing in Terrestrial Archaeology, from Texas A&M University in 2023. Their PhD work has been ongoing since 2020. They specialize in arid land ethnobotany, paleoethnobotany, ethnoecology, and Native/Indigenous studies, especially in the Chihuahuan Desert. They work to understand changing plant-human relationships for health, blending archaeological data, ethnohistorical evidence, and presently-held traditional ecological knowledge to collaboratively address contemporary health issues facing Indigenous communities today.

Gabriela Oré Menéndez, PhD (Ella/She)
Gabriela is a Peruvian anthropological archaeologist specializing in satellite remote sensing, spatial analysis, and AI-based technologies, as well as queer perspectives on archaeological and anthropological practices. She completed her dissertation at Vanderbilt University in 2022, and her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Mellon Digital Humanities Fellowship at Vanderbilt. She was also the inaugural speaker in the Rising Scholars series at the Society for American Archaeology.

Her research focuses on decolonizing methodologies, digital humanities, and Andean Archaeology. Currently, she’s exploring the transformation and reclamation of productive landscapes by displaced Indigenous communities during the colonial and early republican periods in Peru. Her work intersects the large-scale potential of new digital and remote sensing technologies with the histories of people facing processes of political transformation and, at the same time, engages Andean studies with growing scholarship on historical ecology and landscape inequalities.

Gabriela’s other line of scholarly pursuits connects Queer Theory with Anthropological and Archaeological Scholarship. Gabriela is committed to developing an intersectional, multivocal, and global queerization of academics, incorporating binary-breaking research topics and research development, and bringing these discussions to the forefront of her research, teaching and service.

This 90-minute panel discussion will highlight the work of, and challenges faced by, LGBT2SQIA+ archaeologists. How have gender and sexuality norms from today shaped interpretations of the past?  What needs to be done to incorporate more diverse perspectives that accurately reflects not only the current world we live in, but the world of the past?

1. Give the audience opportunity to ask about experiences (and advice!) from LGBTQ archaeologists.
2. Learn about the ways in which diverse perspectives create diverse solutions in archaeology.