Danielle Kurin - Award-Winning Educator and Researcher
Before establishing herself as an accomplished scholar in the field of bioarchaeology, Danielle Kurin graduated magna cum laude with a BA in anthropology and Hispanic studies from Bryn Mawr College. There, among other honors, Danielle Kurin received the Frederica De Laguna Award for Meritorious Academic Work in Anthropology.
Danielle Kurin subsequently pursued graduate studies at Vanderbilt University, where she continued her focus on anthropology and Latin American studies, earning an MA and PhD in the former and a certificate in the latter. Over the course of her graduate studies, she received the Peru Graduate Fellowship and established a bioarchaeology research project in Peru. She concentrated on understanding pre-Columbian society in the Andes and the impact of migration, war, diet and ethnicity on human humans by conducting excavations and analyzing tens of thousands of bones and hundreds of skulls and dozens of mummies. Her work was in part supported by Fulbright and Fulbright-Hays fellowships.
Danielle Kurin brought this academic background to the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where she served as an assistant professor - and later tenured associate professor - of bioarchaeology and maintained co-appointments in Latin American studies and integrative anthropological sciences. She rans the Phillip Walker Bioarchaeology Lab, where she and her students conducted sophisticated analyses of Andean archaeological remains. She also authored an important book on societal collapse and regeneration in the Andes in the pre-Incan period, and dozens of scientific articles and papers.
Dr. Kurin has mentored scores of students from the U.S., Peru, and around the world in their studies of Andean pre-history and bioarchaeology. In recognition of her contributions as an educator, she has won superior ratings as an instructor and several honors, including the Tri-Delta Teacher Appreciation Award from UCSB, the President’s Medal for Teaching & Service from the Universidad Nacional JM Arguedas, and the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award from Vanderbilt.
