Headshot of Donna Kelley1st Place Winner

Donna Kelley

Donna “Shalana” Kelley is a MA student at Northern Arizona University. Her research focuses on uniting ethnography and museum exhibitions. In 2015, for her master’s thesis, she interned at the Western Museum of Mining and Industry (WMMI), in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She also conducted ethnographic interviews with residents of the mining company town Morenci, Arizona, and used the results to create an exhibition plan that implements ethnographic findings in a museum in way that respects both industrial history and culture. Currently, Shalana is working with WMMI to implement her exhibition plan into a temporary exhibit at WMMI, which will open in September of 2016. Her professional interests include ethnography, museum anthropology, videography/photography, and public outreach.

Headshot of Traben PleasantHonorable Mentions

Traben Pleasant

I am currently a PhD student at Oregon State University studying how culture intersects with development projects that use information communications technology (ICT) as a life enhancing tool. My poster on tourism and liminality in Bocas del Toro, Panama was part of research conducted while attending University College London where I earned an MSc in Social/Cultural Anthropology.

Headshot of Kathryn StutzKathryn Stutz

Kathryn Stutz is an undergraduate student in the Sociology/Anthropology and Classics departments at the University of Puget Sound. Her research interests are in the anthropology of museum curation, heritage tourism, and collaborate archaeology. During the fall of 2015, she conducted ethnographic interviews and participant observation at museums in Washington state and the province of British Columbia in order to evaluate how Native American/First Nations identity is communicated through indigenous-designed and majority-designed museum displays. This research revisits the work of historian of anthropology James Clifford regarding Northwest museums and their presentation of indigeneity. Kathryn recently received an AHSS grant in order to research transnational museum networks between Doha, Qatar, and London, England during the summer of 2016.