Victoria Bochniak

Victoria Bochniak is a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her dissertation research, in partnership with the Apsáalooke (Crow) people of Southcentral Montana, investigates Apsáalooke survivance during the establishment of the Crow Reservation through the analysis of archaeological, archival, and ethnographic research. Bochniak has been involved with the Apsáalooke community on numerous archaeological and oral history projects since 2010 and is completing her dissertation within a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework. She believes that CBPR with a survivance theoretical lens can create meaningful outcomes with and for Indigenous and descendant communities.

Additionally, Bochniak is in the beginning stages of a project that examines experiences many graduate students have that affect their research and successes in graduate school, but that too often go under-discussed. These experiences may be traumatic or positive events in students’ personal lives or unexpected encounters while conducting fieldwork. Although these experiences may be different for each graduate student, we often share similar outcomes. For instance, our abilities to conduct research, structure what we write, and the ways we understand the world may all be altered in the aftermath of these personal events. Bochniak is dedicated to building a platform that will allow graduate students to reflect and share their graduate experiences to ultimately create a resource for students to consult before, during, and after fieldwork or graduate school. The goal of this project is to share graduate student stories, especially as they relate to research and knowledge production in anthropology, and to let current and future graduate students know that they are not alone.