Dr. Adolfo Iván Batún Alpuche
Board Member
Dr. Adolfo Iván Batún Alpuche, is Licenciado in Arqueology by Universidad Autónoma of Yucatán; getting his master and doctoral Degrees from University of Florida. His studies have been focusing on Maya economics and agrarian practices during prehispanic and colonial periods, following a community collaborative and decolonizing approach. Currently, he is a professor at Universidad de Oriente in Valladolid, Yucatan.
Dr. Dylan Clark
Board Member
Dr. Dylan Clark is an Assistant State Archaeologist for the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology, Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. In this role he helps implement federal and state legislation designed to conserve cultural resources in the Appalachian region of the state. Prior to joining the NC OSA, he served as Program Director for InHerit at the Research Labs of Archaeology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2018-2020). Dylan began his career in archaeology at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo where he earned a B.A. in Anthropology and Spanish. He went on to earn an M.A. in Latin American Studies from Tulane University and later received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University in 2016 where he studied the Indigenous cultures and history of Mesoamerica. His dissertation research explored the social organization and dynamics of a Maya coastal port community through household archaeology at the island site of Isla Cerritos in Yucatan, Mexico.
Maia Dedrick
Board Member
Maia Dedrick is a researcher who has worked primarily in Yucatán, Mexico, with interests in food systems, climate change, colonialism, and sustainable livelihoods. Her archaeological studies have taken place in collaboration with residents of the town of Tahcabo, where she also contributed to the development of the community museum and heritage trail affiliated with the Proyecto Arqueológico Colaborativo del Oriente de Yucatán (PACOY), as well as InHerit. She currently serves as an Atkinson Postdoctoral Fellow in Sustainability at Cornell University. Since 2011, she has served as a board member for the educational non-profit called Telluride Association.
Nancy Strickland Fields
Board Member
Nancy Strickland Fields’ 18-year museum career has been focused in museum education and administration. She has worked at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico; The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.; and The American Indian Cultural Center and Museum in Oklahoma City. Her current role is Director and Curator of The Museum of the Southeast American Indian at UNC in Pembroke, North Carolina. She is the first Lumbee graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Museum Studies. Nancy earned a master’s degree in History from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and is currently a doctoral student in the Public History program at North Carolina State University.
Bryan Giemza
Treasurer
Bryan Giemza, Ph.D., J.D., is Associate Professor of Humanities and Literature in the Honors College, having joined the faculty in 2019. In addition to his teaching and research he serves as public scholar for the Sowell Family Collection in Literature, Community and the Natural World. Before coming to Texas Tech he was Director of the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His latest book is Science and Literature in Cormac McCarthy’s Expanding Worlds (Bloomsbury, 2023) and he is editor and a contributing to a forthcoming volume, Across the Canyons: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Divisive Communications in West Texas and Beyond (2024).
Patricia McAnany
Director Ejecutivo
Patricia A. McAnany, Kenan Eminent Professor and Chair of the Anthropology Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is co-director of Proyecto Arqueológico Colaborativo del Oriente de Yucatán—a community-archaeology project at Tahcabo, Yucatán, México. She co-founded and directs InHerit: Indigenous Heritage Passed to Present, a UNC program that generates collaborative research and education projects on topics of cultural heritage with communities in North Carolina and the Maya region. She is the author of several books, notably Maya Cultural Heritage: How Archaeologists and Indigenous Peoples Engage the Past, and journal articles.
Khristin N. Montes
Board Chair
Khristin N. Montes is an Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Regis University. She is a broadly trained art historian with additional background in anthropology, archaeology, and museum studies. Her specific areas of research include Maya art and architecture, Indigenous American visual culture and research methodologies, and intersections between art production and social justice. Dr. Montes has recently published on exhibition practices involving Native American, Maya, and African objects in museums; sacred landscapes and architecture in the Maya world; and on the importance of decolonizing college and university-level art history curriculum. Before joining Regis University, she was the Project Facilitator for the Cultural Heritage, Ecology, and Conservation of Yucatec Cenotes Project—a cultural and environmental sustainability and educational project that took place in nine Maya communities between 2018 and 2020. The “Cenotes Project” was jointly organized through InHerit at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and the Universidad de Oriente in Valladolid, Yucatán, Mexico and sponsored by the National Geographic Society. Dr. Montes holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Chicago and M.A.s from Northern Illinois University.
Florence Peacock
Vice Chair
Bio coming soon!
Diane Slocum
Director de Programa
Diane Slocum, Inherit Program Director, is an Anthropology Ph.D. student at UNC-Chapel Hill. Her primary research interest is community-engaged archaeology in Yucatán, Mexico. In the Spring of 2018, she completed an M.A. in the Anthropology program at Northern Arizona University where she gained experience working as an archaeologist in Belize, Central America. Prior to beginning the M.A. program, her archaeological knowledge focused on the American Southwest where she worked in cultural resources management. Her extensive fieldwork informs her belief in the importance of opening lines of communication between archaeologists and local communities. Practicing archaeology in the U.S. instilled in her an ethical concern about how archaeologists interact with local and Indigenous communities that extends beyond the confines of legal mandates.
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