New Full-time Faculty:
Dr. Nichole Fournier will be joining our department as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology.
Nichole is a broadly trained Anthropologist whose work spans Biological Anthropology and
Bioarchaeology. She received a Ph.D in Anthropology from Washington State University in
August 2020, an M.A. in Forensic Anthropology/Bioarchaeology from North Carolina State
University in 2013, and a B.A. in Biological Anthropology and Public Health from Boston
University in 2011. Her research program broadly focuses on the impacts of environmental
change and other stressors (e.g., social inequality, transnational cultural encounters,
pathogenic load) on human morphological, life history, and health variation. She addresses
these questions using skeletal, stable isotope, and ancient DNA data. Her work has thus far
largely focused on Indigenous populations from the San Francisco Bay Area, specifically the
Ohlone nation. Nichole is originally from Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Her education and her work
have taken her all over the country, but she is a New Englander at heart. She is very happy to
join the USM community and build a home in Maine. Her fall classes are ANT 232 The
Anthropology of Sex and Gender and ANT 395: Topics: Forensic Anthropology.
Dr. David Shane Lowry will be joining our department as an Assistant Professor of
Anthropology. A citizen of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, he is currently Senior Fellow in
the School of Social Policy at Brandeis University. In 2021-22, he was Distinguished Fellow in
Native American Studies at MIT. In this role, David led a new conversation at MIT about the
responsibilities of MIT (and science/technology education, more generally) in the theft of
American Indian land and the dismantling of American Indian health and community. Since
2013, David has lectured across the United States – roles in which he has become well versed in
conversations at the intersection of Native America, race, and science/health. His first book,
titled Lumbee Pipelines: American Indian movement in the residue of settler colonialism
(University of Nebraska Press), explores American Indian utilization of colonial conditions to
create opportunities that are both uplifting and oppressive. He is beginning a book with MIT
Press titled Indigenous MIT: why we must rescue science and technology from American
genocide. David is a graduate of MIT (S.B.) and UNC-Chapel Hill (M.A. and Ph.D.). His graduate
work was funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF-GRF).
His fall classes are ANT 101 Anthropology: The Cultural View and ANT 220 Indigenous
Communities of North America.
New part-time faculty:
Jared Lank is a Mi’kmaq documentary filmmaker. He earned his BA in Geography-Anthropology and a Masters of Public Policy, Planning and Management at USM. His work investigates traditional folk and occult knowledge of the Wabanaki, focusing on traditional ecological knowledge and life ways focusing on Indigenous resilience and cultural continuity in the Waponahkik. Currently, his work is on display at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art’s 2023 Biennial exhibition through May 7, 2023 in Rockland; one of 35 artists selected from 423 applicants. In 2021 he was also chosen as a member of the 4th World Media Lab cohort, a partnership between Nia Tero, SIFF, Big Sky Film Festival, and Points North Foundation that supports Indigenous filmmakers globally. He has worked with Nia Tero and Upstander Project on films in the Reciprocity project and on Upstander Project film Bounty, that reveals the hidden story of the Phips Proclamation, one of many scalp-bounty proclamations used to exterminate Native people in order to take their land in what is now New England. Jared is a tribal advisor for the Portland Public School’s Wabanaki curriculum development, aiding in both film production and curriculum structuring. He is currently developing a short documentary about Casco Bay. His fall courses is ANT 199 Wabanaki Worlds