News & Community
The Department of Anthropology, including both faculty members and graduate students, are often in the news. They also frequently lend their expertise to various community organizations. This webpage highlights some of these contributions.
NEW! October 3, 2025 - An interview with a former Western Anthropology faculty member Ian Colquhoun, a biological anthropologist with a specialization in primatology, on the passing of Jane Goodall, the world-famous primatologist, conservationist and chimpanzee researcher. Our colleague personally knew Dr. Goodall and shared his memories of her.
- CBC News Network https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6925692
- London Morning Show https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-158-london-morning/clip/16173053-remembering-jane-goodall
NEW! September 5, 2025 - Andrew Nelson’s interview with Quirks and Quarks on new methods of non-invasive scanning which allows to study Peruvian mummies without unwrapping them.
Learn more here: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-51-quirks-and-quarks/clip/16167734-technology-allows-examination-inca-mummies-without-disturbing
NEW! June 16, 2025 - Faculty member Greg Beckett penned a contribution to The Conversation on the current political and security situation in Haiti, stressing that there are no easy solutions.
Learn more here: https://theconversation.com/haiti-on-the-brink-gangs-fill-power-vacuum-as-current-solutions-fail-a-nation-in-crisis-257948
November, 2024 - Professor Lindsay Bell awarded the CASCA Labrecque-Lee Book Prize Committee Award for 2024 for her book Under Pressure: Diamond Mining and Everyday Life in Northern Canada
The Labrecque-Lee Book Prize honours a single or co-authored monograph on sociocultural, archaeological, bio-cultural, ethnohistorical or linguistic work, in French or English. It is given to CASCA members who demonstrate a Canadian affiliation through either their fieldwork, institution, degree or funding. The winner is honoured at the CASCA annual meeting and receives a $500 award. In 2024,nine monographs were submitted. The Committee’s criteria are richness and deepness of ethnography, strength of theoretical work, literary style, originality, and contribution to anthropological debates.
October, 2024 - Inside the quest to restore dignity to some of Ontario's forgotten
Western historian Professor Cody Groat together with a team of student researchers, has worked to bring dignity back for 400 souls whose final resting place in the back of Ingersoll Rural Cemetery was noted in a burial registry as simply being, in "Potter's Field. Read the article in the Toronto Star.
May, 2024 - Western researchers receive Governor General’s Innovation Award: Lisa Hodgetts and Edward Eastaugh share knowledge with Indigenous communities searching for unmarked graves
Anthropology researchers Lisa Hodgetts and Ed Eastaugh are being recognized by Governor General Mary Simon for their work with the Canadian Archaeological Association Working Group on Unmarked Graves (CAAWGUG).
The network of 15 scholars from across the country offers training, guidance and support to Indigenous communities conducting searches for missing children. Created in the wake of the devastating announcement of unmarked graves near a former residential school in Kamloops in 2021, CAAWGUG shares anthropological expertise with Indigenous communities in hopes of passing on skills and strategies to aid in those complicated and emotional investigations. Read the article in Western News.
