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.

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 has been an organizer of the Society for American Archaeology’s annual Ethics Bowl since its inception in 2003 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.

Dr. Hollowell grew up in Indianapolis, where her parents have lived in the same house for almost 50 years. She enjoys hiking, biking, canoeing, organic gardening, and yoga, and strongly supports global peace and sustainability initiatives. Her two daughters live in Chicago and American Samoa.

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 recently received 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 will examine 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 will be gathering and analyzing case studies and research protocols and making this information accessible to researchers and communities. She will also work on an article for publication that examines the development of culture-based rights in archaeology and begin co-authoring a volume on Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage that will serve as an overview of this emerging field of inquiry.

Her work as co-chair of the World Archaeological Congress Committee on Ethics will entail research that critically explores theories of contextual ethics alongside concerns of social justice and ethical relativism to generate guidelines for ethical practice that are at once particularistic, global, and grounded in specific histories and intercultural dialogue.

Another research project she will pursue 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 scheduled to open in fall 2009, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and organized by Princeton University Art Museum. Her role is to ensure that the exhibit design, catalogue, website, and public programs address the social histories of the objects and ethical issues such as the consequences of the appreciation and commodification of archaeological antiquities.

In addition, Dr. Hollowell will be undertaking grantwriting and editing for several other projects, among them an international conference on Indigenous Peoples and Museums (to be held in Indianapolis in summer 2009) and a forthcoming volume in the Research Handbook series on Postcolonialism and Archaeology (edited by Jane Lydon and Uzma Rizvi).