Kellogg Institute Doctoral Affiliate Elizabeth Adeyemo has been named a recipient of the 2023 Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, which will support her laboratory research on the archaeological ceramics and socioeconomic systems that existed in the Igbo Ukwu society of the 9th-12th centuries CE in Nigeria.
The Wenner Gren grant program funds doctoral or thesis research that advances anthropological knowledge, with the goal of supporting vibrant and significant work that furthers the understanding of what it means to be human.
Adeyemo's grant will run until December 2023 and will cover the material science analyses in the United States, equipment procurement, the creation of a database for the project, and the transportation of the archaeological materials.
Adeyemo is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. Her research utilizes archaeological materials to ask questions about socioeconomic organizations, craft productions, and the correlation between the evolution of craft production systems and broader economic structures in past human societies.
With a focus on Igbo Ukwu, her dissertation explores the interconnections between sociopolitical complexities and ancient economies in West Africa using archaeological ceramics. Ultimately, her dissertation research highlights how the studies of exchange in Igbo Ukwu through the investigation of the organization of the ceramic industry advances understandings of resilience and/or innovation in craft industries, also contributing to models of craft production systems as dynamic through regimes of sociopolitical and economic shifts.
Adeyemo's research also has received support from the Kellogg Institute. She was awarded a Kellogg Institute Conference Travel Grant in 2022 to share some of the outputs of her research at the Pan African Archaeological Association (PANAF) Conference in Zanzibar. Her project also has been partly funded through a Kellogg Institute Graduate Research Grant (2022-2023).
The Kellogg Institute for International Studies, part of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, is an interdisciplinary community of scholars and students from across the University and around the globe that promotes research, provides educational opportunities, and builds partnerships throughout the world on the themes of global democracy and integral human development.