Research & Creative Work

We are proud of the balance we've built between coursework and field work, providing significant on-the-ground experiences for faculty and students alike. Our portfolio of investigations proves that anthropology needn't restrict itself to distant (in place or time) peoples, but has a central role to play in understanding the complex interactions among all communities—including our own.

We invite you to read about our faculty's research and accomplishments below. We think you'll agree that anthropological research at UCD is as much about vibrant societies as it is about compelling scholarship.

Chris Beekman is interested in topics of political organization, political ideology, and migration. He works in western Mexico in the state of Jalisco.

Dr. Hodgkins and Caley Orr, PhD, from the School of Medicine at University of Colorado Anschutz, are examining the history between Neanderthal and modern human populations in Italy. Dr. Hodgkins and her team of collaborators and student volunteers are excavating a site called Arma Veirana, which is the first new Paleolithic site in that region of Italy in more than 20 years. Evidence found at the cave, including stone tools, animal remains, and charcoal, documents the transition between Neanderthal and modern human populations. The team hopes to determine whether these two types of humans overlapped in time. Eight universities from four countries are working on the project, which is funded by the National Geographic Society, CU Denver and Washington University in St. Louis. See CU Denver Today "Digging deep into Italian cave to solve mystery."

Sarah Horton conducted interviews with an MA student in Tijuana on Anglo and Mexican Americans’ cross-border healthcare seeking strategies; the two co-authored an article on their research in Social Science & Medicine in 2011. Dr. Horton also took a student to California’s Central Valley to conduct research on self-care practices of Mexican migrant farmworkers and co-authored an article with her in Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health in 2012. Currently, she is directing a team of students conducting phone interviews with workers’ compensation attorneys in California on the factors that suppress migrant farmworkers’ claims. Students presented on their research projects for her course, “Migrant Health,” in two different professional conferences.

She is currently writing a book about the way that the criminalization of undocumented migrants affects the labor rights of migrant farmworkers in central California. She is also working with migrant farmworkers to help dispel myths of their ineligibility for workers’ compensation insurance.

Steve Koester retired May 2020. He conducted fieldwork with an MA student in St. Vincent examining the effect of neoliberal trade reform, and specifically the country’s replacement of bananas with marijuana as its primary source of foreign exchange. Dr. Koester is working with students examining health issues among the city’s homeless and drug using populations. He recently worked with students on projects examining how policing strategies influence injection settings, and on a contract with Denver Public Health examining factors related to fatal overdose. Dr. Koester is always looking for students interested in volunteering with the Harm Reduction Action Center, a community center and syringe exchange program for people who inject drugs (PWID).

He works with colleagues on NIH funded studies examining Hepatitis C transmission among injection drug users, women’s roles in the methamphetamine economy, opioid overdose prevention, and the impact of city ordinances on the health and well-being of homeless people. He also has a long-term interest in economic development issues in the Caribbean. He currently works on issues related to drug use and homelessness and collaborates with the Harm Reduction Action Center, Denver Health, Denver Public Health (formerly Denver Environmental Health) and Kaiser Permanente. He is also working with Denver Homeless Outloud, a homeless activist organization, on a survey of the effects of policing on homeless people's health.

Charles Musiba is vice-chair of a Denver-based non-profit organization “Africa School Assistance Project – ASAP”, which partners with local communities (villages and local governments) in Tanzania to build schools. ASAP holds that education, more than any other sector of development, seeds dramatic improvements in poverty reduction, gender equality, health outcomes, environmental protection, and wildlife conservation. ASAP’s KUPANDA project empowers school girls by providing them with extracurricular activities such as entrepreneurship and banking at ASAP-built dormitories. Dr. Musiba is also working with Saint Augustine University of Tanzania to develop a graduate program in anthropology, the first in East Africa. Dr. Musiba also worked with the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (Department of Cultural Heritage and GeoParks) to complete the construction of a two million Euros museum at Olduvai Gorge. Dr. Musiba helped raise funds through the European Union for the museum and co-created the display. He is currently on the national Advisory Scientific Committee for the construction of a museum and educational facility at Laetoli, the site of the internationally famous 3.6 million years old hominin footprints.

In Winterim 2017-2018, Dr. Otañez administered the CU Denver Study Abroad Course “Building Global Health Equities in Malawi, Africa" (ANTH 4/5995). Students and instructor explored the lived realities of community members with health related development initiatives. The group examined how public health programs are implemented and evaluated in Malawi. Sites visited included rural clinics, a district hospital, village-based radio listening clubs and a cultural museum. The course was designed to apply innovative methods such as participant observation, informal interviews and group conversations in public health and medical anthropology to document and disseminate ways in individuals narrate wellness issues and which communities leverage local knowledge to build health equity.

Lilongwe Market Winterim Course

Dr. Otañez co-authored “In pursuit of viable alternative livelihoods for tobacco farmers and farm workers” in the Bulletin of the Framework Convention Alliance (FCA) during the Eighth session of the Conference of the Parties to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in Geneva, Switzerland, in the first week of October 2018. FCA is comprised of nearly 500 non-profit groups from over 100 different countries focused on public health and tobacco control.

Tammy Stone is interested in issues of identity, social alliance formation, and aggregation. She works in the ancestral Zuñi region of the highlands of central Arizona and New Mexico (Mountain Mogollon).

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