Laura L. Junker

Laura L. Junker is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and an Adjunct Curator at the Field Museum. Her research focuses on the political economy and ecology of pre-modern chiefdoms and states, particularly in Southeast Asia’s maritime trading polities from the first millennium AD to European contact. She specializes in prehispanic Philippine chiefdoms, with fieldwork in the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, and China.

• Education: PhD (University of Michigan), MA (University of Pennsylvania), BA (University of Michigan)

Her research interests include long-distance trade networks, warfare, demographic dynamics, craft production systems, and gendered power relations. She has conducted decades-long archaeological research in the Bais-Tanjay Region of the Philippines, emphasizing 10th-16th century maritime trade polities and interactions between coastal ports and inland farming/forager populations. Recent work explores the Metal Age (early 1st millennium AD) in Bacong, Central Philippines.

Dr. Junker advises current and past MA/PhD students conducting research in the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and China.