The WAC Student Committee (WACSC) aims to provide representation for all student members within WAC, through which student participation in international academic debate and practice can be fostered and developed. The WACSC considers student participation to be important as it is an opportunity to network and share research interests with other student and professional members of WAC.
The Student Committee seeks to achieve its aim by:
- Encouraging student membership from different regions around the world;
- Liaising between students and other WAC members at Congresses and other WAC events;
- Establishing a network of communication and debate amongst student members of WAC and the wider WAC community;
- Encouraging and organising student participation in academic events within and outside WAC;
- Advocating for financial support for students in relation to their participation in academic events organised by WAC.
Members of the WACSC are: Nupur Tiwari (India); Marian Bailey (Australia); Erin A. Hogg (Canada); Leandro Matthews Cascon (Brazil); Gonzalo Linares Matás (Spain); Yahaira Núñez Cortés (Costa Rica); Hannah Quaintance (USA); Suramya Bansal (India and South Africa); José A. Mármol Martínez (Spain).
Chair of WACSC: Nupur Tiwari (India)
Vice-Chair of WACSC: Marian Bailey (Australia)
Student Representative to the WAC Executive: Oluseyi Odunyemi Agbelusi (Nigeria)
To contact the WACSC, write to wacstudentcommittee@gmail.com
The WACSC manages the following social media pages:
The WAC Students Forum (on Facebook)
WACSC Facebook page
WACSC Twitter account
History of the WACSC
The WACSC was established and announced in June 2006, after encouragement from Peter Ukco and the work of Stephanie Moser, Chris Wilson, Ines Domingo, Tim Ormsby, Margaret Rika-Heke, Sven Ouzman, and Edith Thomas. The committee was subsequently made an official WAC Standing Committee in August 2006. The first official meeting of the WACSC was held during WAC-6 in Dublin in 2008.
At the WAC Assembly meeting during WAC-6 (1 and 3 July 2008), the position of the Student Representative on the WAC Executive Committee (the governing body of WAC) was officially institutionalised.
The WACSC members present at WAC-6 proposed a resolution concerning International Field Schools, which was successfully adopted at the WAC-6 plenary session on 4 July 2008.
WACSC Activities
WAC Student Writing and Poster Competitions
In 2010, the WACSC established the WAC Student Writing Competition run annually, and the WAC Student Poster Competition run at each WAC congress (click for details).
Sponsored Sessions at WAC Congresses
The WACSC works to support student professional development and stimulate discussion about students’ roles in the discipline by sponsoring sessions at WAC Congresses and Inter-Congresses. So far, we have sponsored the following sessions (listed in chronological order):
- “(Re) Defining Archaeology: Emerging Perspectives from International Student Research” at the WAC Jamaica Inter-Congress, May 2007
- “Students as Contributors, Collaborators, Scholars” at WAC-7 in Jordan, January 2013
- “WACSC Forum on Careers in International Heritage” at WAC-8 in Japan, August/September 2016
Coordinating Volunteers at WAC Congresses
Starting with WAC-6 in Ireland, WACSC has coordinated student volunteers under the supervision of the Congress Organizing Committees. The help provided by student volunteers helped make WAC-6, WAC-7 and WAC-8 successful, and in return, they were given assistance to attend the congress. During WAC-6, 14 student volunteers from 6 countries gave their time; during WAC-7, 54 volunteers from many more countries participated; and for WAC-8 17 students from 10 countries assisted as volunteers. WACSC aims to continue to support and organize student volunteers for each WAC congress so that more students can attend and contribute to these events.
WAC Student Committee Statutes
At WAC-6, we held our first official meeting with WAC student members. At this meeting we discussed the draft statutes of the WACSC, these were later amended and formally adopted. This document describes how WACSC business is conducted, including the election and organization of members. At WAC-8, the statutes of the WACSC were formally revised.
WACSC members
Nupur Tiwari (India) – Chair
A representative for Southern Asia
Currently, I am based in Mohali, Punjab as I am enrolled in the Ph.D. programme at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research. I did my graduation in History (Hons.) From the University of Delhi, Masters degree in Archaeology and Heritage Management from Indraprastha University, Delhi, and Post Graduate Diploma in Indian Archaeology from JRN Rajasthan Vidyapeeth University, Udaipur, Rajasthan. I also hold a bachelor’s degree in Education (B.Ed) from Kurukshetra University, Haryana.
I have worked in various archaeological research projects, participated in excavations and explorations, worked as a gallery guide at national children’s museum and in the cultural education sector with an organization named FLOW India before getting into the Ph.D. program. I am mainly interested in prehistoric archaeology and palaeoanthropology. This leads me to pursue my Ph.D. research on Microlithic technologies and landscape adaptations in Central Narmada Basin, Madhya Pradesh. I’ll be tracing the modern human activities in this area by understanding the lithic technology, landscape movement, resource exploitation, and population dynamics. Apart from that, I am also interested in rock art and symbolic behavior, museum studies, traditional knowledge systems, and temple architecture.
Marian Bailey (Australia) – Vice-Chair
A representative for Southeastern Asia and the Pacific
I completed my Master’s degree in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Management at the Flinders University of South Australia. My research primarily focuses on using stable isotope analysis to investigate the prey behaviours of early hominins. I am also involved in geophysical projects and enjoy the breadth of research available to interdisciplinary students. Outside of my primary research areas I enjoy travelling to labs and excavations to continue learning from and being involved with different, international teams of archaeologists. Science and community engagement is my focus during these travels and I hope to pursue that further.
Erin A. Hogg (Canada)
A representative for Northern America
I am a Ph.D. candidate at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. My dissertation focuses on the use of archaeology in Indigenous land claim cases, studying the history of evidentiary standards required to prove Aboriginal title and how archaeological data and methods have been used in the courts. I hold an M.A. from Simon Fraser, where I examined how archaeologists and descendant communities, especially Indigenous communities, are working together in British Columbia. My B.A. is from the University of British Columbia, where my training in anthropology and archaeology first honed my interests in community engagement in archaeology, the evolution of cultural heritage policy, and heritage resource management training, practice, and ethics.
Leandro Matthews Cascon (Brazil)
A representative for Southern America
I am a Brazilian archaeologist with a special interest in plant use, and Indigenous Heritage in general, of the Amazonian Region. In 2017 I concluded my Ph.D. at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, University of São Paulo, Brazil. My doctorate dissertation was an attempt to discuss cultivated plant use in the recent history of indigenous Asurini populations of the Xingu River, Southern Amazon, through a combination of ethnoarchaeological fieldwork and archaeobotanical analysis. In my master thesis at the National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I conducted a study of past plant use in Central Amazon through the analysis of microbotanical remains extracted from artifacts of the Hatahara archaeological site. My love for the Amazonian past and present has led me to live in various cities of the Brazilian Amazon and to work in some of the country’s most important museums, such as the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, the Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia in São Paulo, and the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi in Belém.
Since the middle of 2018, I have begun a postdoctoral study at the Faculty of Archaeology of Leiden University, in the Netherlands. As a member of the ERC-Brasiliae Project, my research investigates how Brazilian ethnographic artifacts now housed in European museums and collections simultaneously express aspects related to the historical context of Dutch and European colonialism in Brazil as well as regarding indigenous agency, seeking to understand how such objects played a part in the transmission, from Colonial Brazil to Europe, of native knowledge regarding plants and animals.
Besides my ever-growing interest in archaeology and anthropology of Lowland South America, I have great curiosity regarding all aspects of Indigenous History of the continent and I participate in projects from other South American regions, such as in a Brazilian and Peruvian archaeological program in the Northern Coastal region of Peru.
Gonzalo José Linares Matás (Spain)
A representative for Southern Europe
Gonzalo Linares-Matás is starting an AHRC-funded DPhil on canid commensality in Eurasian hominin ecosystems throughout the Pleistocene at St. Hugh’s College, University of Oxford (UK). He holds a First-Class BA (Hons) degree in Archaeology & Anthropology and an MSt in Archaeology from the same institution, for which he received the Meyerstein Prize and the national Prehistoric Society Undergraduate Dissertation Prize. The focus of his work is on the study of human-animal interactions, palaeoecological dynamics, and site formation processes through the spatial, taphonomic, and biomolecular analysis of bone assemblages. Gonzalo is also interested in the socio-political contexts of heritage management and ownership, contemporary archaeological theory, and the histories of archaeology and anthropology as practical modes of inquiry. Moreover, as founder of the International Journal of Student Research in Archaeology (2015-present), Gonzalo is committed to transforming the academic publishing landscape to make it more accessible and sustainable.
Yahaira Núñez Cortés (Costa Rica)
A representative for Central America and the Caribbean
I am currently a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology with a concentration in Archaeology at the University at Albany-SUNY, Albany, New York, United States of America. I hold a Bachelors degree in Anthropology and a Licenciatura degree in Anthropology with emphasis in Archaeology from Universidad de Costa Rica, through which I conducted research on local ceramic production and interregional exchange at Pearl Island, Panama. I finished my Masters degree in Archaeology from the University at Albany-SUNY, which focuses on status, interregional interactions and domestic assemblages during the Late Postclassic in Soconusco, Chiapas, Mexico. My dissertation is dedicated to the study of socio-political complexity, household economies and interregional interaction at Lomas Entierros, Costa Rica. Choosing this topic and area was derived from a combination of research interests, but also to the contributions that I could provide to the history of my own country and the scholarship of Central America.
I have worked in various archaeological research projects in Mesoamerica and southern Central America, and have held internships with Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Centro de Investigaciones Antropológicas at Universidad de Costa Rica. I have also worked as a consultant for UNESCO San José and UNESCO Havana offices, with projects focusing afro-descendant history and sites of memory for the presence of African communities in Central America.
Hannah Quaintance (The United States of America)
A representative for Northern America
I am currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University at Buffalo, SUNY (UB) in Buffalo, New York and received my MA in Archaeology from UB in 2016. With a B.A. in cultural studies and fine arts from The Evergreen State College, I entered graduate school with experience in interdisciplinary education and an appreciation for the benefits of collaborative learning. These educational values have guided my work and research interests in collaborative museology and the use of heritage resources in the present. While my doctoral research on the role of local heritage sites in Buffalo’s current redevelopment relies primarily on ethnographic methods, I feel that it is a critical and reflective counterpart to my involvement in local archaeological projects. Most recently, I have participated in the excavation of a historic Underground Railroad site in Niagara Falls as well as other local cultural resource management projects. Additionally, I help facilitate and direct various collaborative projects at the UB Art Galleries and have been involved in the co-curation of a historic Philippines collection at The Field Museum in Chicago, IL.
Suramya Bansal (India and South Africa)
A representative for Eastern and Southern Africa
Suramya Bansal did his graduate studies in Anthropology from India before starting with his Archaeological research in South Africa. As a Socio-Cultural Anthropologist, he explored the commodification of intangible and tangible culture through ethnoarchaeological perspectives in northern India. As a Rock-Art Archaeologist, he is working at the intersection of anthropological theories, ethnographic literature and rock art iconography to understand handprints in southern Africa. Simultaneously, he enjoys engaging in applied anthropology and public archaeology to disseminate rock art and palaeoanthropological knowledge. He is pursuing his research masters from the Rock Art Research Institute and Department of Archaeology based at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
José Ant. Mármol Martínez (Spain)
A representative for Southern Europe
I’m a Ph.D. student interested in art-archaeology, creativity, archaeological ethnography, and archaeological theory. For my PhD, I research about creativity in the archaeological practice. In the past, I have been interested in several topics such as image and representation, archaeology of death, medieval Islamic Spain, Neolithic funerary practices, Japanese archaeology, Contemporary archaeology (19th-20th centuries), and public archaeology (with projects of heritage management, local studies of forgotten heritage, archaeodromes…). I have done short films and documentaries as well as awarded artworks in painting, street art, and poetry, and I participated at excavations in Spain, Portugal, the UK to Israel or Japan. I like to learn about international Archaeology in practice, attending meetings and applying new methods and theories in a creative way: these are some of my interests as WACSC member!