Academics
Patricia L. Delaney
Professor Delaney is the newest member of the department and an applied sociocultural anthropologist with special interest in gender, international development, social inequalities, poverty, and qualitative research methodologies.
She strongly encourages both service work and fieldwork to be an integral part of her anthropology classes. She is also a strong proponent of study abroad. In Summer of 2008, she led a group of students to the South Pacific, where they completed service learning and a modified ethnographic field school in the Kingdom of Tonga.
Courses she teaches:
- Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
- Anthropological Perspectives on Gender
- Gender & International Development
- Participatory Action Research
- Peoples & Cultures of the Lusophone World
Dr. Delaney has worked in variety of applied settings and has provided programmatic and policy advice for international organizations such as the Peace Corps, The U.S. Agency for International Development, Refugees International, and a variety of other organizations working in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Her applied work bridges the worlds of academia and public policy, providing ample opportunities for her students to see the “real world” applications of the anthropological perspective. She has worked in over 40 countries around the globe, most recently in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Angola.
Professor Delaney has also conducted long-term ethnographic research in two former Portuguese colonies, Brazil and Timor Leste. Her work in Timor, which was supported by a Fulbright grant in 2006-2007, examined the legacies of occupation and conflict and their impact on cultural identity there. Her recent article Who Burned Down Our House This Time?: Ethnography & Conflict in Timor Leste appears in Practicing Anthropology.