Graduate Students

Graduate Student

Areas of Interest:

Art and archaeology of the Roman provinces, archaeological photographs, cultural heritage, classical reception

Taylor Carr-Howard studies Roman provincial art and archaeology through the lens of its reception. In particular, she is interested in the role photography plays in shaping perceptions of the classical past. Taylor received her BA in art history from Scripps College in 2017 and her MA in...

Alex Casteel

Areas of Interest:

(northern) medieval archaeology, architecture, art, literature, and society, and particularly of the transatlantic Norse/Viking diaspora

Alex Casteel is a PhD candidate in the Interdepartmental Archaeology Graduate Program in the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Drawing from archaeological and historical sources alongside his transdisciplinary field research, Alex's dissertation...

Manuel Cesar Macuja Elizalde

Areas of Interest:

Historical Archaeology of the Early Modern Philippines & the Roman Mediterranean, Piracy and Raiding, Interregional Maritime Trade, Filipino & Iberian/Basque Shipbuilding, Maritime & Underwater Archaeology, Community-based Archaeology, Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

Manuel Cesar "Mac" Macuja Elizalde was born and raised in Manila, Philippines. He earned a B.A. in Anthropology and Classics from Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY in 2023. At Skidmore, he specialized in Roman history, completing a thesis project on the application of Geographic Informations...

Yunong Gu

Areas of Interest:

Archaeology of Bronze Age China, Zooarchaeology; Economic history; Settlement Archaeology

Yunong Gu is a native of Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China. He received his B.A. and M.A. in archaeology from the Department of Archaeology and Museology at Peking University. When he was in Peking University, he excavated several sites of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, such as Pingliangtai,...

Earl Hernandez

Areas of Interest:

Spanish colonialism during the early modern period

Earl John Cedo Hernandez is an anthropological archaeologist from Bicol, Philippines. He received his BA in Political Science from the Ateneo de Naga University in 2015 and MA in Anthropology from the University of the Philippines - Diliman in 2022. As a Bikolano anthropologist he is broadly...

Ariadin Jones

Areas of Interest:

Late Neolithic - Early Bronze Age China

Ariadin Jones’ current research trajectory began as an undergraduate at the University of British Columbia (UBC), where she majored in Asian Area Studies and minored in Archaeology, with an additional concentration in bioarchaeology. Looking to combine these interests, she attended the UCLA...

Katrina Kuxhausen

Areas of Interest:

Cultural heritage, digital archaeology, landscape, architecture, reuse, memory, and gender studies within ancient Greece and Rome

Katrina Kuxhausen-DeRose is pursuing a PhD in Archaeology at UCLA, with a focus in Classical Archaeology. Her research interests include cultural heritage, digital archaeology, landscape, architecture, reuse, memory, and gender studies within ancient Greece and Rome. She began researching this...

Lucha Martínez de Luna

Areas of Interest:

Mesoamerican interregional trade networks, merchants, feasting, sociopolitical organization in complex societies, and the Zoque civilization.

Lucha Martínez de Luna was born and raised in Colorado. She has worked on numerous archaeological projects in the American West and Southwest, as well as in central and southern Mexico. She worked for the National Institute of Anthropology and History conducting the excavation and restoration of a...

Iman Nagy

Iman Jamal Nagy is a Northeast African Landscape Archaeologist, Surveyor and student of Digital Humanities that has been a part of and conducted research projects in Northeast Africa and Southeast Asia. She earned her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures...

Talia Neelis

Areas of Interest:

Archaeology of Cyprus (2nd and 3rd millennia BCE), cross-craft interaction, ecology, materiality, communities of practice, multispecies studies.

Talia Neelis is pursuing a PhD at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology with a focus in prehistoric Cypriot archaeology. Her research examines cross-craft interaction in Philia Phase and Bronze Age Cyprus (c. 2450 - 1300 BCE), where she investigates how crafting processes facilitated enduring...

Carly Pope

Areas of Interest:

Pottery of Central America

Carly Pope was born and raised in Atlanta, GA. She earned her BA, with honors, in art and archaeology from Princeton University in 2016. Her senior thesis, on the topic of early pottery in Latin America, received the Frederick Barnard White thesis award. She presented her research at the annual...

Luis Rodríguez-Pérez

Areas of Interest:

Urbanism and landscape in the Mediterranean during the Hellenistic & Roman period. Topography of ancient sites. Applied photogrammetry and 3D modeling. Archaeological reconstruction of architectural sites. Religious syncretism and multi-culturalism in the Ancient World. Anthropological Ethnography. Public & Community-led archaeology.

Luis Rodriguez-Perez was born in Cuba and moved to Miami at a young age. He earned a BA in archaeology and history, with a minor in Classics, at the University of Southern California. He has participated in several excavation and survey projects in Italy and Greece, including at Pompeii, Vergina,...

Karla Saracay

Areas of Interest:

California Archaeology, Historic Archaeology, Mexican Rancho Period, Contemporary Archeology

Karla Saracay earned her BA in Anthropology from UC Berkeley in 2021. She worked at the McCown Archaeobotany Laboratory from 2018-2022 working with the Upper Mantaro Archaeological Research Project’s (UMARP) legacy collection. Her BA thesis was focused on households and artifact distributions...

Rachel Schloss

Areas of Interest:

Architectural Construction Technologies, Inca Archaeology, Andean Archaeology, Colonial Andes, Archaeology of Colonialism in the Americas, Adobe/ Mudbrick, Place-Making, Temporality, Geoarchaeology.

Rachel Schloss (she/her/hers) is a PhD student at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA. Her doctoral research focuses on architecture and construction (technology, adaptation, and meaning) in Inca architecture from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries AD. Before joining the Cotsen...

Gabriel Silva Collins

Areas of Interest:

Pre-Hispanic Andean archaeology, Inca archaeology, environmental archaeology, borderlands and interregional exchange, wak'as, landscape archaeology

Gabriel Silva Collins earned his B.A. in Anthropology from Williams College in 2019. At Williams, he worked with Antonia Foias to study Aztec religious statues, and completed a thesis project that surveyed the interconnected system of Inca roads between Cusco and Huchuy Qosqo, Peru. Gabriel also...

Dominique Sparks-Stokes

Dominique Sparks-Stokes obtained her BA in archaeology with minors in anthropology and geology at the University of Cincinnati, followed by an MA in anthropology, with a focus on archaeology, from the same institution in 2019. During this time, she investigated the role that ceramic raw...

Matei Tichindelean

Areas of Interest:

Interactions between nomadic and settled population groups in Egypt and Sudan in the Bronze Age, with metal mining and working in the Eastern Desert of Egypt and the Sudan

Matei Tichindelean is a PhD candidate in the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on the interactions between nomadic peoples of northeast Africa and the settled populations along the Nile Valley. His dissertation combines...

Akphivath Vitou

Areas of Interest:

Pre-Angkorian and Angkorian periods from (6th to 15th centuries CE) in Cambodia; ceramics analysis, archaeological survey and excavation, settlement patterns, remote sensing, landscape archaeology, and Khmer art and architecture.

I developed a lifelong fascination with Cambodia’s past. This passion led me to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in Archaeology at the Royal University of Fine Arts (RUFA, 2014), Phnom Penh, and an MA in History of Art and/or Archaeology at SOAS, University of London (2020). My academic journey revolves...

Zichao Wang

Areas of Interest:

History and civilization of early China, especially the political and cultural transformations in late Bronze Age and early Iron Age.

Zichao Wang received his BA in culture and arts management at Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, followed by an MA in comparative and public history at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and another MA in East Asian studies at McGill University. His research covers the history and civilization of...

Yen Chun Wang

Areas of Interest:

zooarchaeology, geoarchaeology, Austronesian, East and Southeast Asia

Yen Chun Wang received his BA in anthropology with a minor in geosciences from the National Taiwan University in 2020. Yen Chun focuses on the interactions between humans and their environments, but is also interested in topics such as spheres of interaction in East and Southeast Asia, and...

Wenyi Zhao

Areas of Interest:

Interdisciplinary study of early China through archaeology, history, philology, and linguistics within the broader framework of global antiquity; memory and knowledge traditions; formation and fluidity of both textual and material remains; quantitative thinking in archaeology.

Wenyi Zhao 趙文浥 was born and raised in Suzhou, China. From 2020 to 2024, she studied at Peking University in Beijing, where she earned a B.A. in History from Yuanpei College and completed a Certificate in Classical Chinese Philology. She received interdisciplinary training focusing on the...