April M. Beisaw, Professor of Anthropology, Selected for a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to Austria
April M. Beisaw, Professor of Anthropology, was selected for a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to Austria, where she will serve as the Fulbright-Natural History Museum Vienna Visiting Researcher in academic year 2024–25. Founded over 270 years ago, the museum describes itself as “Dedicated to the kingdom of nature and its exploration.” While in Vienna, April will be investigating the wild-domestic divide in species of rabbits and pigs throughout space and time. The museum’s large collection of animal bones from archaeological sites across Europe provides an opportunity to reconsider how certain species resist complete domestication while others become irreversibly changed by human interaction. Such insights might help us to avoid domesticating wild species whose habitats are shrinking in the age of climate change. Meanwhile, April’s research on New York City’s water sources—including the fabled Ashokan Reservoir, some 30 miles northwest of Poughkeepsie—is featured in Archaeology magazine’s May/June 2024 edition.