معرفی
Sonya Atalay is a Provost Professor of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Professor of Anthropology at MIT. She serves as Director and Principal Investigator of the NSF-funded Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science (CBIKS). Her work focuses on community-based research with Indigenous and local communities, emphasizing ethical collaboration and the integration of Indigenous knowledges with Western scientific practices.
Dr. Atalay holds a BA from the University of Michigan, an MA and PhD from UC Berkeley. Her research explores repatriation, traditional ecological knowledge, and decolonizing institutional practices. She authored Community-Based Archaeology (2012) and is completing Braiding Knowledges, examining how Indigenous and mainstream frameworks coexist to address global challenges.
Her awards include the Chancellor’s Medal (2023), Patty Jo Watson Distinguished Lecture Award (2022), and recognition for her NAGPRA-related work. She teaches courses on Indigenous methodologies, public anthropology, and archaeology of food, fostering student engagement with community-driven research. Her current projects include graphic narratives on repatriation and STEM collaborations with Indigenous knowledge systems.
