Anthropology is a way of seeing and making sense of the world and offers prescriptions for how to make it better. Broadly speaking, anthropology is the study of humans in all times and places, but it can also include humans’ relationships with nonhuman species, geology, geography, and the built environment. Anthropologists use quantitative and qualitative research methodologies and work in a wide variety of settings from institutions of higher education to the government, business sector, and for nonprofit organizations.

Why did I choose anthropology?

I chose anthropology because I wanted to continue my work in (post) war countries and with people surviving war, work that started in post-war Bosnia and then continued when I returned to the U.S. and worked with refugees. I explored other options: international relations, women’s and gender studies, peace and conflict resolution, sociology, even comparative literature. But I settled on anthropology because of its breadth. I went to graduate school to gain more tools to understand war, support survivors, and to be a more educated person in general. What I learned, though, and what I stress in my teaching is that the strength of anthropology does not lie in where one works or who one works with; it’s about how one works with them. Too often people still see anthropology as a discipline that works with people in remote places. It’s very misleading. Anthropologists are from all over the world and they work all over the world; where there are people, there are anthropologists. I have worked as an anthropologist in small towns in North Dakota, Minnesota, and South Dakota, and cities in South Sudan and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Anthropology is about seeing the big picture or the forest (racism, sexism, war, colonialism, homophobia, globalized capitalism, climate change) and the small picture or the trees (individuals, groups, specific places). We study the relationships between individuals and groups and larger political, economic, social, and biological processes. For example, my research with Roma in Bosnia stressed the particular situation for Roma in this post-socialist, post-war country but also tied the high prevalence of violence against Roma to ideas about ethnicity, nation, and race, which are not unique to Bosnia-Herzegovina. My book about refugee resettlement to Fargo ties the relationship between refugees and the dominant population in Fargo to a history of race in the United States.