Talks and Events in Anthropology

Check this page for information on upcoming talks and events in the Department of Anthropology.

Re-rooting Towards Revitalization: Lessons from Traditional and Ingenous Foodways

Date: Thursday, October 29, 2026, 4:00  - 5:30  pm.  
Location: Online Via Zoom
This webinar brings together Knowledge Keepers, researchers, and food practitioners who are actively revitalizing traditional and Indigenous food practices in the lands now known as Canada, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. In these settler colonial contexts, Indigenous food knowledges and ways of life have been obscured, mischaracterized, and targeted for erasure. Calling attention to the persistence of diverse, integrated practices of wild and cultivated provisioning throughout traditional stories, archaeological records, and contemporary practice, the speakers question the linearity of food systems evolutions that is presented in dominant historical accounts. Even as these experts' foodways are intimately entangled with regions on either side of the globe, they share common challenges. In this discussion, they will present overlapping wisdom for navigating food systems in crisis by turning toward the intertwined past, present, and future.
Featuring:
  • Kelsey Charlie, Tixweltel—Xwilexmet Director for the Sts’ailes Aboriginal Rights and Title Department
  • Te’o Lau Dr. Viliamu Iese—Academic Lead for the Drought and Innovation Hub and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne
  • Natasha Lyons, PhD—Director of Ursus Heritage Consulting - Ira Provost, MA—Manager of Piikani Nation Consultation and Traditional Knowledge Keeper for the Piikani Nation and Blackfoot Confederacy
Moderated by: Evelyn Nimmo, PhD, FLOW Research Lead and Curator of the Bryan/Gruhn Archaeology & Ethnographic Collections at the University of Alberta
Organized and supported by: Alison Blay-Palmer, Evelyn Nimmo, and Kelsey Speakman with the UNESCO Chair on Food, Biodiversity and Sustainability Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, and the Food, Learning and Growing (FLOW) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Partnership

 

Brown Bag Workshop: New Life for Old Data: Improving Access to Hominin Fossil Heritage through Digitization of the Sperber Collection

Speakers: Jack Elliott, Gavin Rye, Lesley Harrington, Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta
Date: Monday, October 19, 2026, 11:45 a.m. - 1:00 pm.
Location: Tory 14-28
Abstract: The Sperber Collection is an archive of australopithecine dentognathic radiographs, photographs, and data sheets (n=156) collected in South Africa in 1969-70 by University of Alberta Dentistry Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Sperber (BSc BDS MS PhD FICD Dr Med Dent (Hon causa) FRSSAf). The Collection preserves imaging, morphologic, and metric observations of fossils from several important paleoanthropological sites (Swartkrans, Sterkfontein, Makapansgat, Taung) that formed the basis of Sperber’s doctoral thesis (1973) and part of the Atlas of Radiographs of Early Man (1982) with M.F. Skinner. Despite its ongoing scientific value, the Collection remains as a deteriorating physical archive that is relatively inaccessible for research. While modern methods, including micro-computed tomography, have since been used to study many of the fossils, historical measurements, radiographs and photographs are disconnected from these newer records. This results in an absence of a more comprehensive public digital repository. Our project follows a documented protocol using media-specific scanning parameters and a standardized naming convention that improves the findability of Sperber’s original images and observations. We are using AI-enabled OCR extraction of hand-written observations and measurements to improve the usability of the datasheets for future researchers. Our end goal is to digitize the collection and make its contents available through the Human Fossil Record.org online archive (M.M. Skinner). By reconnecting historical and modern records, we seek to expand scientific accessibility and support reproducibility to aid in future analyses in dental anthropology. Our work examines how revisiting historical documentation can enhance and extend the scientific life of a Collection and improve access to heritage resources.