Faculty Spotlight: What We're Doing

Robin Bernstein organized and chaired a symposium in August on ‘Primate Body Size: A Multiple-Level Perspective’ at the 22nd Congress of the International Primatological Society, in Edinburgh.

Alexander Dent recently completed an exploratory period of fieldwork in Brazil for a new project, funded by GWU’s University Facilitating Fund

2008-2009: "Camelô Campinas: The Politics of the Informal Economy is São Paulo, Brazil"

Mark Edberg collaborated with UNICEF (Latin America-Caribbean Region) to develop a theoretical rationale, framework, and data indicators for data that UNICEF should collect to monitor the health/well-being of youth and adolescents (approximately ages 10-24) as part of its role monitoring progress related to the Convention on Rights of the Child, Millenium Development Goals, and other conventions. He presented the work to a region-wide meeting at UNICEF headquarters in Panama City, Panama in early October.

Mark Edberg is co-PI of a new CDC-funded project to work with a national panel and develop a research agenda that connects macroeconomic factors to youth violence. He is also co-PI on a new NIH-RO1 grant related to gender-based violence in the Latino community.

Richard Grinker served on the Review Board for the Autism Speaks Foundation, and acted as recommender for Macarthur Foundation Fellowships.

Richard Grinker (and Peter Hotez) were mentioned in the dedication to Paul Offit’s ‘Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure’ (Columbia University Press), as “real heroes—and true prophets.”

Chet Sherwood and collaborators at Wayne State University have recently been awarded a 5-year National Science Foundation-HOMINID grant to study the evolutionary origins of the brain energetics and adaptive plasticity of humans:

2008-2013: PI (collaborative with Morris Goodman, Wayne State University); “Evolutionary origins of the brain energetics and adaptive plasticity of humans”; National Science Foundation: HOMINID Program (total: $2,480,919; Sherwood subproject: $709,802)


Chet Sherwood, Francys Subiaul (Speech and Hearing Science), and Tad Zawidzki (Philosophy) were awarded a GWU Research Enhancement Fund grant to establish the Mind-Brain-Evolution Center, a new interdisciplinary research group that investigates the evolutionary origins of the human mind.

2008-2011: “Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Evolutionary Origins of the Human Mind”; collaborative with T.W. Zawidzki (Philosophy) and F. Subiaul (Speech and Hearing Science); Research Enhancement Fund ($104,250)

Joel Kuipers was the Principal Investigator on an award from SRI International.

2008 “Developing a semiotic framework for how people learn across settings
over time: An interdisciplinary collaboration of researchers.” ($92,000)

Steven Lubkemann was awarded funding from the Ford Foundation for work on a project that will locate and initiate the scientific documentation of several shipwrecks that foundered along the southern African coast during the second half of the nineteenth century while involved in the international slave trade, providing an invaluable contribution to the study of one of the most consequential social processes in global history. The project will also assist its local partners in the development of a cultural resource management program that will preserve and protect this irreplaceable heritage while also rendering it accessible to a worldwide public. Finally the project will help regional partners develop a collaborative regional plan for further developing their heritage tourism sector with these unique resources. Through the scientific documentation, preservation, and protection of these resources for public benefit this project will result in substantial benefits to local, national and regional economies.
2008-2010: “The Southern African Slave Wrecks Route Project”; collaborative with
IZIKO-South Africa, The US Park Service, Institute for International
Tourism Studies, and partner institutions in Mozambique and Angola

Steven Lubkemann was awarded funding from the United States Institute for Peace, on the second phase of a collaborative research project which is examining customary legal institutions and practices and their interactions with the formal legal system in post-conflict Liberia.

2008-2009: “Current Practices of Justice and the Quest for Rule of Law: Policy
Options for Liberia's First Post-Conflict Decade.”

Peter Lucas was awarded a grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

2008-2010 “The fracture modes of human teeth”; collaborative with James Lee.

Robert Shepherd ran a field school in China this past summer. Fourteen undergraduates from Columbian College, the Elliot School, and the School of Business spent one month at the Beijing International Studies University, studying Chinese and the anthropology of development. As part of this course, they then spent one week in Inner Mongolia and Shanxi Province, visiting several World Heritage sites being promoted by Chinese authorities as tourist destinations as part of development efforts. These included the Yunggang Buddhist caves and Xuán Kong Sì Monastary, which date from the fifth century Northern Wei Dynasty, and Wutai Mountain, whose temple complexes date to the ninth century Tang Dynasty.