Alumni and Former Staff

Megan Rhodes Victor

(Postdoctoral Scholar, 2018-2020)

Megan Rhode's Website

Dr. Megan Rhodes Victor is an Assistant Professor and Mellon Faculty Fellow, Department of Anthropology, Queens College, CUNY, New York. She received her Ph.D. from the College of William & Mary before coming to the Stanford Archaeology Center as a postdoctoral scholar. Victor is a historical archaeologist and her research focuses on colonialism, immigration, commensal politics, and gendered practices among historically marginalized groups. Her most recent work focuses on the archaeology of taverns, saloons, and social negotiation in 18th and 19th century colonial North America, including a project on "Molly Houses." Molly houses operated in secrecy in back rooms or upper floors of taverns and provided an opportunity for gay, transgender, and cross-dressing individuals in 18th-century England and the English Colonial World to meet with one another in a world where such actions were capital offenses. This project is the first to archaeologically examine these spaces of the LGBTQ+ community. She is also conducting work on the intersection of archaeology and video games, including virtual reality of archaeological fieldwork and 3D scanning, which is referred to as "archaeogaming.” ​

Kimberley Connor

Kimberley Connor's Website

(PhD conferred 2023; thesis: From Immigrant to Settler: Food and Dining in a Nineteenth-Century Institution of Immigration)

Dr. Kimberley Connor is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Stanford Archaeology Center. She is a historical archaeologist and culinary historian whose work focuses on food and dining in nineteenth-century institutions of immigration in the British Empire. She works mostly in Australia, but has also worked on archival and archaeological collections in Ireland, England, Scotland, Canada, and China. As a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Stanford Archaeology Center she is cataloguing and analysing glass from the Market Street Chinatown Project which is an exciting new project for her. Kim completed her BA (Languages) and BA Honours at the University of Sydney before coming to Stanford University where she completed an MA and a Ph.D. in Anthropology. In her spare time, she loves social dancing, cooking, and travelling to new parts of the world.

Koji Lau-Ozawa

(PhD conferred 2023; thesis: Japanese Diaspora in a WWII Incarceration Camp: Archaeology of Gila River)

Dr. Koji Lau-Ozawa is a Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA studying the material remains of WWII Japanese American incarceration. His dissertation focused on the archaeology of the Japanese diaspora, examining the material connections and landscapes of Japanese American communities. In particular I have worked in collaboration with the Gila River Indian Community to investigate the site of the WWII Gila River Incarceration Camp. This long term project combines archaeological, oral historical and archival research in a transnational framework to study the camp landscape and flows of material culture. A second site of investigation looks the material culture of a pre-WWII urban Japanese American community in Santa Barbara. These research projects are supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, The Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant, as well as the Society for California Archaeology.

Claire Maass

(PhD conferred 2021; thesis: A Collaborative Bioarchaeology of African Diaspora and Enslavement in Colonial Cañete, Peru)

Dr. Claire Maass is a Forensic Anthropologist with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. Her dissertation project examined the life-histories of enslaved peoples of African descent in Peru’s colonial sugar economy. As a case study, it centers on bioarchaeological, historical, and ethnographic work at Hacienda La Quebrada, a former sugar plantation in the coastal region of Cañete. Interdisciplinary research at the site reveals how social distinctions according to intersecting categories of gender and age patterned access to resources, vulnerability to violence, and the labor roles of enslaved peoples within the plantation community. These conditions in turn shaped disparities in their individual health and well-being, with a disproportionate impact on children and young women. These findings challenge popular narratives that often center on the labor of adult men, instead illuminating the roles of women and children in the colonial sugar economy and early Afro-Peruvian life.

Laura Ng

Laura Ng's Website

(PhD conferred 2021; thesis: An Archaeology of Chinese Transnationalis)

Dr. Laura W. Ng is an Assistant Professor in Anthropology at Grinnell College. She is a historical archaeologist with a research focus on the archaeology of transpacific migration and Asian diasporic communities. Since 2017, she has been conducting archaeological research on late nineteenth and early twentieth century Chinese migration and the transpacific circulation of people, goods, and ideas between home villages in Taishan County (Hoisan), Guangdong, China and two Chinese diaspora sites in the Southern California: San Bernardino Chinatown and Riverside Chinatown. Other recent projects include co-directing the Cangdong Village Project, which was the first archaeological investigation of a home village in Guangdong Province, and providing research support for the Chinese Railroad Workers of North America Project at Stanford University. She has also helped lead community archaeology projects at Manzanar National Historic Site, a National Park Service unit that preserves the story of the unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Nate Acebo

(PhD conferred June 2020; thesis: Re-Assembling Radical Indigenous Autonomy in the Alta California Hinterlands: Survivance at Puhú) 

Nate Acebo's Website

Dr. Nathan Acebo is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology-Native American and Indigenous Studies at University of Connecticut (2021*–). At Stanford, Dr. Acebo was a fellow in the Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education Doctoral Program (EDGE: 2013-2020), Institute for Research in the Social Sciences (IRiSS: 2019-2020), and Mellon Humanities Program (2019-2020). After Stanford he held the University of California Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in Critical Mission Studies for the 2020–2021 year at the University California, Merced. His research in southern California and Hawaii focuses on Indigenous networks, subaltern resistance and governance, and decolonizing practices.

Adrian Myers

(PhD conferred June 2013; thesis: The Archaeology of Reform at a German Prisoner of War Camp in a Canadian National Park during the Second World War [1943–1945]) 

Adrian Myers's Website

After leading a major archaeology project for British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority (BC Hydro) from 2018-2021, in 2021 I moved into a new role as a Strategic Advisor to BC Hydro’s Executive Team. In this position I provide advice and counsel to the company’s leadership on both emerging risks and situations, and the longer-term strategic direction of our organization. I’m grateful to be part of a progressive organization where background in archaeology and experience working with First Nations is relevant to the work and is valued by the team, even at the highest level of the organization.

In my time at Stanford I was focused on studying various forms of incarceration and internment through historical and archaeological approaches. This research and extensive collaboration with other scholars resulted a variety of articles, in the edited book “Archaeologies of Interment” (Springer, 2011), and finally in my PhD project and dissertation “The Archaeology of Reform at a German Prisoner of War Camp in a Canadian National Park During the Second World War (1943-1945)”. A short CBC News video on the project is also available here. I’ve made my publications easily accessible for download from my SelectedWorks page.

After Stanford, I moved into archaeology and environmental consulting and project management in my hometown of Vancouver, Canada. I invite you to reach out to me or connect with me on Linkedin if there is anything I can do for you, or to start a conversation!

Noa Corcoran-Tadd

(MA conferred June 2011; thesis: “Is This the Gold That You Eat?” Coins, Entanglement, and Early Colonial Orderings in the Andes (AD 1532−c. 1650) [second reader])

Websites: 

• Noa Corcoran-Tadd Princenton profile
• Noa Corcoran-Tadd Academia profile

Noa Corcoran-Tadd is currently at the Program in Latin American Studies, Princeton. He is a historical archaeologist who focuses on the archaeology of empire and capitalism in the south-central Andes, Using a combination of remote sensing, archaeological survey, and archival sources, his research traces the long-term transformations of mobility, infrastructure, and borders in the region, from pre-Inca traditions of llama caravanning to the colonial silver routes to the shifting frontiers of the Chilean and Peruvian nation-states. His current fieldwork includes a new project looking at landscapes of settlement and mobility in Peru’s Sama Valley in collaboration with colleagues in Peru and at Washington University in St Louis.