Faculty

Dada Docot is a cultural and visual anthropologist of the hometown and the Filipino diaspora whose works aim to advance conversations about social justice and decolonization. One of her performances/social media interventions which critiqued the academic job market became viral! Some of her works include the card game BINGO for Anthropologists of Color , films Baad ng Pauno (Restless) and Performing Naturalness, and videoke projects such as #Pandeoke and Maligaya Sana ang Pasko produced in collaboration with Respond and Break the Silence Against the Killings (RESBAK), etc. Dada obtained her PhD in Anthropology from the University of British Columbia in 2018.

Faculty

Courtney Wittekind is a sociocultural anthropologist and documentary filmmaker whose scholarly and creative works address political transition, spatial politics, and temporality. Wittekind’s ethnographic films and sonic compositions Minmanaing/Kyauktada/Sanchaung (2024), Olcott, WV (2022), and Circle Train (2018), build on these thematic concerns through multiple media and in multiple geographic contexts. Her creative work has been funded by the Mellon Foundation, UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art, Society for Visual Anthropology, and Harvard’s Film Studies Center, where Wittekind was an FSC-Harvard Fellow in 2021-22.  She received her PhD in Social Anthropology with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice from Harvard University in 2022.

PhD Student

Talofa, Everyone!

My name is Olivia Palepoi and I am from the mountains of Midvale, Utah and the islands of Samoa located in the heart of the Pacific! I received my MS degree from Purdue University in the department of anthropology and am currently a first-year PhD. My research pertains to Indigenous resurgence within the Samoan diaspora looking into ways archives of photography and material culture have the potential to regenerate relationships outside of settler colonial boundaries of existence.

Here are some examples of my work:

1. Resurgence as Practice in the Samoan Diaspora: Photographs, Reconnection, and Reimagination

2. Resistance and Refusal in Polynesia: a persistent community of care and self-determination

3. Mapping Home