Julie Hollowell (Ph.D. Indiana University 2004) is a cultural anthropologist whose work spans anthropology, archaeology, ethics, art, cultural heritage law and policy, and museum studies to consider the broad implications of how people in the present value and use “the past.” Dr. Hollowell recently completed a two-year Killam Fellowship at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver) in the Department of Anthropology and is currently a Research Associate with the Center for Archaeology in the Public Interest (based at IU-Bloomington). Her interests focus on multiple claims on the material and intellectual past; the ethics of social science research, particularly archaeology and cultural heritage studies; and the repatriation of knowledge, materials, and research directives to source communities.

Dr. Hollowell has always had a passion for teaching and learning. She holds an MS in Education and taught science and social studies for a decade at Harmony School, a progressive K-12 school in Bloomington, Indiana, as well as initiating a statewide network of teachers involved in innovative school reform. Prior to returning for her Ph.D. in anthropology, Dr. Hollowell worked as an academic advisor at IU-Bloomington and was actively involved in efforts to protect Native American burials in the state of Indiana. While a graduate student at IU, she helped establish an innovative fifth Ph.D. track in Archaeology and Social Context within the Department of Anthropology to address contemporary issues in archaeology and heritage studies. Dr. Hollowell’s early fieldwork explored the market for walrus ivory carvings from the Bering Strait region and intellectual property protections for Alaska Native artists. For four summers she served as crew chief for archaeological excavations conducted on Native lands in the Inupiat village of Wales (pop. 130), the northwesternmost point of the Americas and once an important link in intercontinental trade.

Dr. Hollowell is known for her research on “subsistence digging,” the antiquities market, and archaeological ethics. Her chapter, “Moral Arguments on Subsistence Digging,” in The Ethics of Archaeology: Philosophical Perspectives on the Practices of Archaeology (edited by G. Scarre and C. Scarre, Cambridge University Press, 2006) shows how this work integrates ethics and archaeology. In 2003, she co-edited a major text in this field, Ethical Issues in Archaeology with Larry Zimmerman and Karen Vitelli. Her research often takes the form of “archaeological ethnography,” using ethnographic methods to explore the sociocultural meanings and implications that the past, both in its material forms and in memory, holds for living people. Her fieldwork is often multi-sited and moves between Native communities, public agencies, tourist sites, homes of private collectors, museum archives, and cosmopolitan art worlds. In a recent ethnographic project, she examined an archaeological field school that took place on the Musqueam Indian Reserve in Vancouver as a collaborative venture between the First Nation and the University of British Columbia. She recently co-edited a volume with Lena Mortensen on Ethnographies and Archaeologies: Iterations of the Past (University Press of Florida, 2009).

Dr. Hollowell serves as co-chair of the Committee on Ethics of the World Archaeological Congress (WAC), an organization dedicated to improving global representation and the diversity of voices in archaeology and heritage matters. With her co-chair, Alex Herrera (University of the Andes, Bogota), the committee is looking toward developing a framework for ethical decision-making in archaeology that incorporates guidelines for inter-cultural and inter-national research. Dr. Hollowell is also series co-editor (with George Nicholas) of Research Handbooks in Archaeology (published by Left Coast Press), a series of comprehensive volumes covering various subfields, distinctively global in scope and with a strong emphasis on research ethics. She was an organizer of the Society for American Archaeology’s annual Ethics Bowl since its inception in 2003 until 2008 and recently co-authored Ethics in Action: Case Studies from the SAA Ethics Bowl (with Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Dru McGill, SAA Press 2008), designed to promote ethics education at the university level and beyond.

During her year as Schaenen Visiting Scholar, Dr. Hollowell will be working on several research projects at various stages of completion. A major focus will be the international project on Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage: Theory, Practice, Policy and Ethics that she has developed over the past three years with Dr. George Nicholas (Simon Fraser University), which receives its funding from Canada’s Social Science and Humanities Research Council. This research brings together an interdisciplinary team of anthropologists, archaeologists, lawyers, museologists, philosophers, bioethicists, and policymakers from seven countries with support from 25 partnering organizations, which range from the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization to Aboriginal communities in Australia and regional cultural heritage centers. Using a critical theory approach and community-based participatory research methodologies, the research team is examining the emergence and resolution of intellectual property concerns related to archaeology and cultural heritage, ranging from potential applications of information obtained from ancient human genetic material, to questions about culturally appropriate access to information in museum and archives, who has rights to data recovered from archaeological sites, and the commodification of cultural knowledge. Dr. Hollowell has been gathering and analyzing case studies and research protocols and making this information accessible to researchers and communities through publications and an online knowledge base.

Another research project she is engaged in over the coming year involves her role as guest curator (with William Fitzhugh of the Smithsonian Institution) for Gifts from the Ancestors: Ancient Ivories of the Bering Strait, a major exhibition that will open at the Princeton University Art Museum in early October 2009, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. At the opening she will moderate a panel on ethical issues associated with the exhibition. Her role is to ensure that the exhibit design, catalogue, website, and public programs address the social histories of the objects and the ethics surrounding the appreciation and commodification of archaeological antiquities.

In addition, Dr. Hollowell will be teaching courses this year on "The Social Life of Things" (Fall '09), "Subsistence and Sustainability" (Spring '10) and a senior seminar on ethics and anthropology. In the spring she is co-organizing a panel discussion for the annual conference of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics on the ethics of ethnographic fieldwork.

Dr. Hollowell grew up in Indianapolis, where she attended the Orchard School and Tudor Hall School. She enjoys hiking, biking, canoeing, organic gardening, and yoga, and strongly supports global peace and sustainability initiatives. Her two daughters live in Chicago and Seattle.