Graduate & Undergraduate Training

The laboratory provides a comprehensive training environment aligned with KU’s commitment to student development and scholarly excellence. Graduate students will be integrated into research clusters that combine conceptual sophistication, field engagement, collaborative publication, grant development, visual documentation, ecological monitoring, archival curation, rigorous methodology, and ethical deliberation. They will acquire competencies for navigating the scientific, historical, political, environmental, biomedical, and phenomenological dimensions of Neotropical research with intellectual depth and reflexive awareness.

Undergraduates will enter a structured research ecosystem offering apprenticeships in ethnographic analysis, archaeological methods, ecological observation, visual ethnography, collaborative mapping, digital preservation, archival interpretation, community partnerships, and public-facing scholarship. They will contribute to the Speakers Series, annual conference, and Occasional Papers, gaining exposure to global conversations that are intellectually demanding and civically significant.

Margarita Rivera Arrivillaga presents at Society for Applied Anthropology Conference

NAL Research Fellow and PhD Student in Anthropology, Margarita Rivera Arrivillaga, served as a co-chair and presented "Varying Conditions for Building Community Health Responses After Internal Forced Displacement: The Case of Three Communities in Chihuahua, Mexico," at the 2025 Society for Applied Anthropology Conference.
Margarita Rivera Arrivillaga

Alexandra Navarro presents at Society for Applied Anthropology Conference

NAL Research Fellow and PhD Student in Anthropology, Alexandra Navarro, served as a co-chair and presented "Leaving but Never Escaping: Violence, Displacement, and Collective Trauma in Choloma, Honduras," at the 2025 Society for Applied Anthropology Conference.
Alexandra Navarro

Kiera Eckhardt presents at American Anthropological Association Conference

NAL Research Fellow and PhD Candidate in Anthropology, Kiera Eckhardt, presented "An Ethnography of Migration in Quito, Ecuador," at the 2025 American Anthropological Association Conference and was featured on their social media.
Kiera Eckhardt