SfAA 2019 Election Results

President Alexander (Sandy) Ervin announced today the results of the 2019 Annual Election. Dr. Judith Freidenberg and Dr. Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez have been elected to three-year terms on the Board of Directors. Both Freidenberg and Vélez-Ibáñez will assume office on March 23, 2019, during the Spring Meeting of the Board. They will replace outgoing members, Ruthbeth Finerman and Bryan Tilt.

Dr. Judith Freidenberg (Ph.D., City University of New York) has been on faculty with the Department of Anthropology at the University of Maryland since 1995, where she has taken leadership roles as Director of Undergraduate Studies, Director of Graduate Studies and Director of the Graduate Certificate on Museum Scholarship and Material Culture. In addition to the US, she has taught in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. Dr. Freidenberg is an applied anthropologist with a track record of inter-disciplinary research, national and international experience in communicating research findings with the scientific community, service providers, policy makers and lay publics. She has conducted research on ethnicity, migration and well-being.

Dr. Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez (Ph.D., USCD) held professorships in anthropology at UCLA and the University of Arizona where in 1982 he was the founding director of the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology. He became dean in 1994 at the University of California, Riverside of the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences and founded the Ernest Galarza Applied Research Center, and in 2011 founded the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University. Presently, he is Regents’ Professor of the School of Transborder Studies and School of Human Evolution and Social Change, and Founding Director Emeritus of STS, and Motorola Presidential Professor of Neighborhood Revitalization, at Arizona State University. He has had numerous research and applied projects funded by private foundations and governmental agencies including the newest in 2016 which is a five-year project designed to recruit, train, and retain Mexican origin migrant students to Arizona State University.

SfAA members also selected Dr. Jane Gibson (Ph.D., Univ. of Florida) for a three-year term as Secretary. Since 1992, she has been on the faculty of the Department of Anthropology of the University of Kansas where she teaches and conducts research in applied cultural anthropology. She has received teaching and research awards including the Robert C. McNetting Prize for Outstanding Paper in the Journal of Political Ecology. Gibson’s research interests sit at the interface of cultural and ecological systems. Her current project explores the social, ecological and ideological implications of automation and digital technologies on industrial agriculture.

Finally a new member of the Nominations and Elections Committee was selected - Dr. Samual Cook (Ph.D., Univ. of Arizona). His research focuses broadly on community viability and environmental justice, with an emphasis on sustaining models of local and traditional ecological knowledge and seeking synergies thereof with Western science.