Institute at Brown for Environment and Society

Jada Ko recently received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University. Her dissertation research focused on the changes in the exploitation of animals through time from the Neolithic to Early Bronze Age in the Huai River Valley, Anhui Province, China. In particular, she is interested in how different forms of societies, ranging from non-states to states, engaged in the politics of memory to add value or devalue different animal species for social and political purposes. She employs zooarchaeological and ethnographic approaches to examine how people remember and conceptualize animals and how this can affect animal ecology and in turn impact human societies.