Our Board

Executive Director

(BA, University of Toronto; MSc, University of Edinburgh; PhD, University of Toronto) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Her main research interests include human-animal interactions, bioarchaeology, isotope analyses, Andean archaeology, political economy, and pastoralism. Her PhD research involved the study of the exploitation and veneration of animal species among the Moche of North Coast Peru. She examined the Moche iconographic record, faunal remains from the Middle Horizon sites (CE 600-1000) of Huaca Colorada and Tecapa and undertook systematic isotopic analyses of human and animal remains to interpret the role of wild and domesticated species in the daily lives, seasonal gatherings, and ritual practices of coastal communities. Her current research project addresses the role and influence of Wari imperial expansion during the Middle Horizon of the Cusco and Nasca regions. The central objective of this research is to realize the way that local groups of the Cusco and Nasca regions were responding to environmental and political transformations to shed light on the obstacles faced by these communities and their resilience in the face of change. Her research can be found at: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5tCkPxoAAAAJ&hl=en and https://anth.ubc.ca/profile/aleksa-alaica/

Social Media Director

Julia E. Earle (BA and MA, University of Toronto; PhD Candidate, University of Texas at Austin; Central Michigan University) is an anthropological archaeologist working in the Sacred Valley, an important region of the former Inka imperial heartland (Cusco, Peru). Since 2017, she has directed collaborative and community-engaged research projects in the southern Peruvian highlands with funding from the National Science Foundation, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and National Geographic Society, among other private foundations. Using a multi-scalar methodology, her dissertation evaluates Inka state formation by reconstructing diachronic change in the Sacred Valley’s built environment between 900 and 1532 CE. In contrast to a long-running scholarly focus on elites, Julia’s ongoing research attends to the political agency of rural, non-Inka populations. Her next-phase research will combine archaeology, ethnography, and oral histories to investigate past and present agropastoral groups’ strategies of resilience and sovereignty in the face of climate change and state occupation. Julia’s work has been published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology and has been presented at numerous universities and conferences in the USA and Peru. Follow her research on Instagram (@juliaearle16) and at earle3j@cmich.edu

Research Director

(BA, Université Laval; MA, Trent University; PhD, University of Florida) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Mount Royal University. Her main research interests include human-environment interactions, political economy, colonialism, trade and husbandry of animals, and subsistence patterns in the Maya subarea and broader Mesoamerica, which she studies using zooarchaeology, taphonomy, biomolecular and geochemical analyses, and ethnohistory. Her Ph.D. research investigated the impact of Spanish colonialism on household-level political economy at Lamanai, Belize, a Maya community in the Spanish borderlands. Using a mix of zooarchaeological, taphonomic, isotopic, and archival data, she examined how community members of different statuses and occupations continued or transformed their use and access to animal resources as they negotiated the new colonial order (1450-1700 CE). She is leading a new collaborative project to investigate the long-term interactions between Mesoamerican groups and freshwater turtles. This study aims to document the possible resilience or vulnerability of river turtle populations to anthropogenic pressures within the scale of human history and identify the range of practices in which Mesoamerican groups used freshwater turtles. Her research publications can be found on Google Scholar.

Events Director

Financial Director