Two anthropology Ph.D. students receive major NSF fellowships

Melinda Gurr and Lauren Hosek, both second-year doctoral students in anthropology, have received highly prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships. The awards support advanced graduate study for three years, at $30,000 per year. In selecting Gurr and Hosek, the NSF wrote that their selection was based on their “outstanding abilities and accomplishments,” and their “potential to contribute to strengthening the vitality of the U.S. science and engineering enterprise.”

Gurr is from the red rock country of Southern Utah. She received bachelor’s degrees in economics and anthropology at the University of Utah, and then worked as a research consultant, policy analyst and community organizer in rural and urban manufactured home communities. Her doctoral research centers on the role of youth cultural politics among Latin America’s largest social movement, the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), in Brazil.

Hosek’s doctoral research focuses on historical archaeology with a concentration in bioarchaeology. She graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis, where she specialized in archaeology and anthropology. She has done fieldwork on prehistoric sites in the Midwestern United States, as well as medieval sites in England and Scotland. Her current research focuses on a skeletal collection from a 10th century medieval village in what is now the Czech Republic. She is interested in conducting a bioarchaeological investigation that will examine the effects of changing early medieval political structures on mobility and marriage patterns, conflict and interpersonal violence, and religious structures and activities.