Meet our Faculty

• Landscapes place and space
• The construction of negotiation of cultural identities and the politics of representation
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.


- Russian-speaking diaspora
- Russian Federation and its constituent populations
- French North America
- Nationalism and ethnicity
- Religion and Community
- Sociolinguistics and ethnolinguistics
- Language and education
- Métis Historical Communities, Métis ethnogenesis, Continental Métis and [French-]Canadien Communities

- Biological anthropology
- Skeletal Biology
- Forensic anthropology
- Human adaptability
- Nutritional anthropology

• Archaeological theory, technology and subsistence
• Complex foragers
• Archaeology of human origins
• First Nations and archaeology
• Northwestern North America
• Northeast Asia, Eastern Africa
- 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.
Adjunct Faculty

Dr. Erin Gibson
Adjunct Professor
BA (SFU), MPhil, PhD (Glasgow, Scotland)
University of Glasgow School of Humanities (Affiliate Reasearcher)
Stirling University Centre for Environment, Heritage and Policy (Associate Member)
• Heritage in contested landscapes
• Heritage as social action
• Community-based research
• The anthropology of momement and social interaction


- Plains Native Culture and Traditions
- Métis Culture and Traditions
- Plains/Métis Spirituality, Systems and Medicines
- Traditional Knowledge and Values
- Métis/Cree Oral History
- Traditional Education
- First Nations Dis eases, Pre-Contact and Post-Contact Medical Anthropology
- Language- Fluent in English and Learning Cree

Dr. Tara Joly
BAS (Guelph), PhD (Aberdeen)
- Environmental Anthropology
- Indigenous Rights & Sovereignty
- Extractive Landscapes
- Community-Based Research
- Environmental Monitoring
- Ways of Knowing
Dr. Joly is an environmental anthropologist specializing in applied and community-based research with Indigenous peoples in northern Canada.
Dr. Joly’s research interests include Indigenous rights, extractive industries, disturbed landscapes, settler colonialism, human-animal and human-plant relations, history of science, and interdisciplinary studies. Her work examines Métis and other Indigenous responses to Alberta oil sands development, with an emphasis on (wet)land reclamation and encounters between different ways of knowing and using the environment. She is particularly interested in documenting how Indigenous land in settler colonial states is remade as extractive territory or settler home, and her research examines and supports processes by which Indigenous peoples assert sovereignty and renew relationships to place.
Prior to joining the Anthropology Department, Dr. Joly was a Research Director with Willow Springs Strategic Solutions, Inc., a social science research consulting firm based in Cochrane, Alberta. As a consultant, she conducted applied research projects in Alberta, including community-based research, traditional land use impact assessments, technical reviews, environmental monitoring research, and oral history research.
Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Saskatchewan, working with Dr. Clinton Westman and associated with the School of Environment and Sustainability, under a SSHRC-funded project, Cultural Politics of Energy – with which she remains affiliated. She received her PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen in 2017 (supervised by Drs. Rob Wishart and Nancy Wachowich, examined by Drs. David G. Anderson and Colin Samson).

- Human-animal relations
- Sentient and sacred landscapes
- Hunting and herding societies
- Ancestral language revitalization and identity
- Circumpolar ethnography, Inuit Studies
- Siberian & Inner Asian Studies

Dr. James A. McDonald
BA Hons (Manitoba), MA (Alberta), PhD (UBC)