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Welcome to WAC Student Committee (WACSC) website! The WAC Student Committee aims to provide representation for all student members within WAC, through which student participation in international academic debate and practice can be fostered and developed. The WAC Student Committee considers student participation to be important as it is an opportunity to network and share research interests with other student and professional members of WAC. The WAC Student Committee seeks to achieve its aim by: 1. Encouraging student membership from different regions around the world;
2. Liaising between students and other WAC members at Congresses and other WAC events;
3. Establishing a network of communication and debate amongst student members and with WAC members through WACSC activities and programmes, such as academic events/activities and the mentoring programme;
4. Encouraging and organising student participation in academic events within and outside WAC;
5. Advocating for financial support for students in relation to membership and participation in academic events related to WAC.
Members of the WACSC are: María Florencia Becerra (Argentina), Ranjan Kumar Datta (Bangladesh), Paris Ferrand (Mexico), Ali Ghobadi (USA), Brian Hole (New Zealand), Stelios Lekakis (Greece), James Lumowo (Nigeria), Dru McGill (USA), Liu Qing (China), Anastasia Sakellariadi (Greece), Jordi Teixidor (Spain), Guanyu Wang (China), Heather Winter (Australia).
To contact the WACSC, write to: wac_student_committee@flinders.edu.au
Scroll down or click to learn more about: 1) WACSC Activities, 2) WACSC Statutes, and 3) WACSC Member’s Research Interests.
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WACSC Activities (beginning with the most recent)
1) The WACSC was instrumental in the organization of new annual WAC Student Writing Competition (click here for details)
2) The WACSC was active at WAC-6 in Dublin (29 June to 4 July 2008) (click here to see photos). The WACSC held its first official meeting with WAC student members on 1 July 2008. A draft of the WACSC statutes was discussed during the meeting, and it was later amended and adopted as the final version of the statutes (see below).
At the WAC Assembly meeting (1 and 3 July 2008), the position of the Student Representative on the WAC Executive Committee was officially institutionalised. The Student Representative will normally be the elected chair of the WACSC (the final wording to be confirmed in the revised WAC statutes). More student voice will be reflected in the WAC policies! The current Student Representative to the Executive Committee is Dru McGill.
Those WACSC members present at WAC-6 proposed a resolution concerning International Field Schools, which was successfully adopted at the WAC-6 plenary session on 4 July 2008. The text of the adopted resolution can be seen here.
The WACSC took responsibility for the organisation of first-ever WAC Student Paper Prize and WAC Student Poster Prize (see here for details). The Prizes were awarded to the following students (whose papers and posters appeared in Archaeologies): First Place Paper: Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels: "Trajectories of value: international heritage management of archaeology for the reduction of poverty"
Runner-up Paper: Jennifer Rodrigues: "The 1993 historic shipwrecks amnesty in Australia"
First Place Poster: Mathew Coller: "SahulTime: rethinking archaeological representation in the digital age"
Runner-up Poster: Shibutani Ayako: "Late Pleistocene to early Holocene plant movements in Southern Kyushu, Japan"
Finally, under the supervision of WAC-6 Organising Committee and the coordination of WACSC, 14 student volunteers coming from Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, England and Belgium helped with the organisation of WAC-6.
3) WACSC organised a session titled "(Re) Defining Archaeology: Emerging Perspectives from International Student Research" at the WAC Jamaica Inter-Congress in May 2007. Click here for details.
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WACSC Statutes
At WAC-6, the first official meeting with WAC student members was held on 1 July 2008. A draft of the WACSC statutes was discussed during the meeting, and it was later amended and adopted as the final version of the statutes. Click here to view a PDF copy of the statutes.
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WACSC members (as of April 2010)
María Florencia Becerra (Argentina)
I am a fifth-year (final year) student of archaeology and have a range of research interests. I am interested in prehispanic and colonial metallurgy, combining the analysis of archaeological evidence with ethnohistorical studies. I am involved in two research projects in the North of Argentina. I am also working in a research group focusing on archaeology in the context of political violence (during the last military dictatorship in Argentina).
Ranjan Kumar Datta (Norway)
I am doing MA in Social Anthropology in university of Bergen, Norway at present I am writing my thesis on Indigenous women and Labour Migration in Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh. There has been a growing trend among the indigenous people of Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh to migrate from their traditional occupations and take up new activities in the suburban and big cities. These changes have led to critical shifts in the social relations and institutions of the indigenous people. So I am enplaning how the relationship has been changed and how it is connected with indigenous women empowerment.
Paris Ferrand (Mexico)
I am the representative from the Caribbean and Central America. I am currently a student at the Universidad Veracruzana at Mexico. My personal research interest foci is early humans in America and in Mexico.
Ali Ghobadi (USA)
I am a PhD student at American University in Washington, DC. I was introduced to WAC by participating in the organization of the WAC 5 conference in 2003. My interests in Archaeology focus on methodology and theory and -- like many of you -- I am particularly interested in the social practices related to "doing" archaeology. In some of my research, I have looked at the use of technology in archaeology and how social practices influence the kind of archaeological questions that are asked using particular technologies. These questions are even more interesting to me on a global scale when one takes into account different traditions across the world in "doing" archaeology. I am planning to do my dissertation in research in Japan. So my current geographic focus is in Japanese archaeology and I participated in the recent WAC Inter-Congress in Osaka. In the past, I have been involved with projects in or lived in Egypt, Southwest United States, Northwest Argentina, and Hawaii. I worked on projects involving GIS/GPS mapping and analysis, archaeological visualization, as well as old-fashioned excavation.
Brian Hole (New Zealand)
I am from Aotearoa (New Zealand), and wrote my masters dissertation on the repatriation of human remains to that country. Currently at the Institute of Archaeology at UCL in London, I'm writing my PhD thesis on the role of heritage in defining identity in India, from the perspectives of the nation state and of minority/tribal groups. More details can be found on my research website.
Stelios Lekakis (Greece)
Areas of interest: Archaeological heritage management, Classical archaeology
James Lumowo (Nigeria)
I am a final year undergraduate student of Archaeology in the department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. At present, I am researching Settlement Patterns and Architecture of the Shen village (abandoned site). Ethno-archaeology, Settlement archaeology, and Cultural Resource Management (C.R.M) interest me.
Dru McGill (USA)
I am a PhD student at Indiana University, where I study in the Archaeology and Social context track. My primary research interests are in the intersections between archaeology, ethics, law, and the public. I am also a Research Associate at the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology at IU. My PhD research focuses on pottery, memory and identity in the late-prehistoric Mississippian period in Indiana. I am a co-organizer of the Society for American Archaeology Ethics Bowl and a co-author of Ethics in Action: Case Studies in Archaeological Dilemmas (SAA Press 2009). In addition to being chair of the WACSC, I am a member of the Society for American Archaeology Committee on Ethics, and the Student Representative to the World Archaeological Congress Executive Committee.
Liu Qing (China)
I am doing a MA in the School of Archaeology and Museology in the Beijing University of China. My major is the Chinese Archaeology of Song Dynasty to Ming Dynasty (about 10th-17thcentury). My Bachelor’s dissertation is about the Celadon of China. Currently, I am most interested in the study of tombs and porcelains of China. I am also working on research about the communication of the ceramics between China and Japan.
Anastasia Sakellariadi (Greece)
The provisional title of my doctoral research is: “Archaeology for the people? Greek archaeology and its public, if there is one: an analysis of the socio-political and economic role of archaeology in Greece from the foundation of the Modern Greek state (1831) to the present day”. Keywords are: public archaeology, community archaeology, history of archaeology, Greek archaeology and national identity, state archaeology and management of archaeological sites
Jordi Teixidor (Spain)
Areas of interest: History of the Antiquity, Archaeology and cultural heritage, the rest of my interest: Middle Age and Modern History.
Guanyu Wang (China)
My major is the Chinese Archaeology of Song,Yuan and Ming Dynasties (about 10th-17th century) and Porcelain Archaeology. I am in the first year of MA in School of Archaeology and Museology in Peking University, Beijing, China. Now my main research field is maritime trade and relationships between China and the West (including the ancient areas from Southeast Asia to Africa, and mainly in 10th to 17th century). Export porcelain is my principal research object. My graduation thesis was about China-Southeast Asia relations and trade. One of my papers about export porcelain of Changsha Kiln has been published on YOUNG ARCHAEOLOGISTS, Beijing, China, v20.
Heather Winter (Australia)
With expertise in developing culturally appropriate exhibition and education frameworks with Ngarinyin Aboriginal elders, we have developed the cultural concept Mamaa The Untouchable Ones from Cave to Canvas which covers the intellectual copyright of Ngarinyin clan estates to the Wanjina and Gwion Gwion rock art galleries North West Kimberley Australia. My interest is to work with the community through their creativity to address their aspirations of creating artwork that acts to protect their cultural heritage through developing culturally appropriate protocols and community governance. Through converging archaeology with art, the ‘Mamaa’ collection was put together to assist the Ngarinyin elders focus to preserve their traditional culture. The fieldwork involves intensive collaboration working with the Ngarinyin as experts in their culture. With 15 years of expertise in Ngarinyin cultural immersion learning about their customary law; a key focus of my interest and work with the Corporation is to develop cultural heritage resource management using strategies of Indigenous knowledge systems and governance to protect the copyright of their rock art sites. My interest lies in working with Indigenous communities to assist them to create a proactive platform to engage in the issues addressing conflict experienced by the Ngarinyin regarding their Intellectual Property rights through examining the impact of colonial naming, interpretation and appropriation in relationship to the Wanjina/Gwion/Bradshaw figures. How do Western concepts of intellectual property, land ownership impact on Ngarinyin culture, their human rights and future claims to such inheritance on their ancestral lands? What are the key elements of successful, equitable resolutions of cultural and intellectual property rights issues, and what examples exist of how to translate these into workable policy and protocols? |
