Research in Sociology and Anthropology

Dr. Ana Velitchkova, Croft Associate Professor of Sociology and International Studies, is a global sociologist who is currently working on the question: Why do people engage in violence?

She has developed a theory of violent participation that situates engagement in violence in social institutions. Social institutions related to the state, the family, and the community provide opportunities for somatic learning of violence. She is investigating new empirical cases to further examine the theory, including mass shootings and extremist violence in the United States.

The Russell Sage Foundation awarded a Visiting Scholar position to Dr. James Thomas (left in photo), Associate Professor for Sociology, to work in New York City with a cohort of 14 selected from across the country. He used the residency to work on a project about how white Southerners are making sense of race and racism today. Dr. Thomas is Co-Editor of Sociology of Race and Ethnicity Journal. In the photo he is receiving the Lift Every Voice Award for the betterment of human relations on campus.

In her forthcoming book, Whispers in the Pews: Evangelical Uniformity in a Divided America (NYU Press), Dr. Amy McDowell, Associate Professor of Sociology, takes a bottom-up approach to understanding how evangelical churchgoers gently and effectively implement the idea that contemplating and expressing progressive points of view is inherently bad for the church and for America. She is the Director of Queer Mississippi, an oral history interview project to document, preserve, and exhibit LGBTQ+ history in Mississippi.

Dr. Ryan Parsons, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Southern Studies, explores how questions of space and race intersect to structure mobility opportunities, especially in rural and depopulated communities. His current book project is from a community study of Sunflower County in the MS Delta, where he spent three years working with a cohort of young people who aspired to go to college. Dr. Parsons also organized a college access summer camp for high school students in Sunflower County, Bolivar County, and Meridian, MS.

Campus Compact awarded Dr. Jodi Skipper, Professor of Anthropology and Southern Studies, the Thomas Ehrlich Civically Engaged Faculty Award for senior faculty who practice exemplary engaged scholarship and community collaboration. She has investigated how African American historic sites interact with the production of heritage in tourism spaces through two projects: the Behind the Big House program in Marshall County, MS, and the Promiseland Historic Preservation project in St. Martin Parish, LA.  

Dr. Jesse Tune, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Archaeological Research, is an archaeologist who studies human migrations and the colonization of new landscapes during the Pleistocene and Early Holocene. He has worked on many of the oldest archaeological sites in the American Southeast to understand how humans responded to changing environmental conditions. He recently led a research team studying the production, distribution, and use of stone tools 13,000 years ago. He also co-edited a volume about the American Southeast at the end of the last ice age.

Dr. Bridget Martin is Croft Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Korean Studies and co-director of the Geography minor. An urban geographer and political geographer, her research focuses on the US-Korea alliance through the lenses of land and sovereignty. Since joining the UM faculty, she has become Chair of the Asian Geography Specialty Subgroup at the American Association of Geographers, and she has joined the US-Korea NextGen Scholars Program for mid-career Korea specialists. She organized workshops on the themes of territory and sovereignty for scholars in Korean Studies in collaboration with the Korea Institute at Harvard University and The Journal of Korean Studies.

Dr. Kristin Hickman, Croft Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International Studies, received a Fulbright award for research on the relationship between language, politics, and cultural production in contemporary urban Morocco.

She is particularly interested in debates over colloquial Moroccan Arabic (Darija) and its changing presence in the Moroccan public sphere. How have Black migrants shaped (and been shaped by) the broader processes of Moroccan national identify formation? She has also studied these questions in Egypt, Oman, and France.