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Anthropology professor awarded major research grant

October 11, 2022

Woman smiling in front of desktop displaying 3D scans — Miriam Belmaker

The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently awarded a $246,665 grant to Associate Professor of Anthropology Miriam Belmaker. The NSF award will further enhance the Department of Anthropology’s Surface Metrology and Imaging Lab by funding the purchase of a 3D micro laser scanner and software for digital analysis.

This lab already contains several instruments that are found in only a few other U.S. universities. The addition of the 3D micro laser scanner will help to make The University of Tulsa a national center for material sciences research, including investigations of climate change and human evolution.

What can ancient rodents’ teeth reveal about today’s changing climate?

For Belmaker, the NSF-funded technology will allow her to fashion a new approach to studying past environments based on the shape of rodents’ teeth. Because animals eat food that changes with the environment (hay-like foods during dry periods and leafier vegetation during wet ones), those foods modify the tooth surface, meaning that different shapes are created on a micro level.

3D micro laser with hippo tooth — 3D micro laser and hippo tooth

Using the 3D micro laser scanner, Belmaker will be able to look at the tooth shape of modern rodents by creating digital 3D scans. “I can then correlate the tooth shape with the current climate where they live and I can see if there is a relationship between the two,” said Belmaker. “With that information in hand, I will then be able to examine fossil rodents using the same methods and, thereby, infer past climates.”

Belmaker plans to focus on three time periods in human evolution, including when early humans dispersed from Africa into Eurasia 2 million years ago, the extinction of Neanderthals and the survival of modern humans during the last glacial period (ca. 20,000 years ago). “Knowing how climate change has affected these key events in human evolution is not only important for understanding our past but also has direct implications for the current global climate crisis,” Belmaker commented. “Current climate change is having immeasurable effects on human populations worldwide. To understand how the current climate may affect us and nature around us, looking at the past is critical. This research is a step in that direction.”

Are you interested in knowing more about TU’s Surface Metrology and Imaging Lab and the new 3D micro laser scanner and software? Contact Miriam Belmaker at miriam-belmaker@utulsa.edu for all the details.

Environment, technology and the future of food

September 13, 2022

Assistant Professor of Media Studies Zenia Kish investigates Silicon Valley entrepreneurs’ “remaking” of basic food processes and how they pitch new products as edible, desirable and a way to address climate change and future food scarcity. She also researches the farm as a “media text” sown with digital technologies and questions of where our food comes from and where it’s going.

Media studies is a field growing increasingly diverse in areas of culture, environment and technology. If the idea of studying a multifaceted subject excites you, head to the Department of Media Studies to see all that awaits!

Archaeological research on past land use sheds light on future climate change

June 22, 2021

Professor of Anthropology Thomas Foster’s archaeological research is helping to refine global climate change models by mapping human land use for the entire globe over the last 10,000 years. After five years of vigorous investigations, the work of Foster and an international cadre of scientists — archaeologists, historians, geographers, paleoecologists and modelers — has been published in PLOS ONE, a prestigious peer-reviewed open access scientific journal.

Man with grey hair, smiling, wearing a purple open-collar shirt and a cream-colored blazer — Thomas Foster

“Mapping past human land use using archaeological data: A new classification for global land use synthesis and data harmonization” presents a simple, hierarchical classification of land use systems designed to be used with archaeological and historical data at a global scale. It also offers a schema of codes that identify land-use practices common to a range of systems. Both elements are implemented in a geospatial database.

This publication arose out of the work Foster and his colleagues have been conducting as part of a project called LandCover6k. The goal of this project is to produce new datasets of climate-induced natural vegetation change (NVC) and anthropogenic land-cover change (ALCC) for climate modeling using archaeological data to help improve climate change models. (Anthropogenic is a term used to characterize the impact on nature of humans or their activities, and is often found in discussions of pollution and environmental degradation.)

The publication of “Mapping past human land use using archaeological data” has caught the media’s eye. Here’s a selected list of the coverage thus far: Penn Today, AzoCleantech and Science Daily.

A major impetus for the team’s work was, Foster explained, the fact that “there are existing climate change models for the earth that are highly inaccurate about human land use.” To correct these misconstruals, “dozens of scientists from all around the world are pulling from local expertise to create maps of human land and trying to answer questions of how, when and what type of land use did humans engage in.”

While this research will improve our understanding of past interactions between land cover and climate, perhaps even more importantly it could also help humanity see the effect of land-use change on the planet’s climate in the future. With that in mind, Foster and his team hope their research can be used to influence governments’ climate change policies.

Paleo sciences, modern problems

Foster’s involvement in this project began in 2015 when he saw a posting seeking more researchers to contribute. “I knew at once this would be a great project to get involved with,” said Foster. “It was global, interdisciplinary, and about applying paleo sciences to modern problems, which happens to be the topic of my third book, Viewing the Future in the Past.” Sensing a great professional fit, Foster quickly got involved.

Foster’s career as an anthropologist has been centered on understanding humans’ effects on the environment, with a particular on the Americas. He brought this expertise to the LandCover6K project and has taken the lead on North American land-use research for the team. Until the COVID-19 pandemic halted nearly all international travel, the team met all around the world.

According to Foster, his participation in the project would not be possible without the support of The University of Tulsa, both with research and travel grants. In return, Foster has brought a lot of knowledge back to the classroom: “My students at TU are largely why I decided to participate in the project. I teach about human effects on the environment at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and this project has helped by working allowing me to work one on one with graduate students in the lab learning methods as well as results.”

Even upon publication, the work is far from finished for Foster and his team. Instead, he says, the publication will be the latest product from a long-term project that is designed to improve global climate change models.

Foster is traveling down an exciting, research-heavy road. And someday, he believes, his findings could make a very real impact on daily lives and shape the way humans think about the environment.

Are you fascinated by diverse cultures and the lives of people past and present? If so, learn more about the remarkable explorations you can undertake while studying anthropology at TU.

Professors awarded NOVA FuTUre Fund innovation prizes

May 6, 2021

Associate Professor of English Grant Jenkins and Chapman Associate Professor of Anthropology Miriam Belmaker are the latest recipients of University of Tulsa NOVA Fellowship innovation prizes from the FuTUre Fund in support of their development of innovative new courses.

“The NOVA innovation prizes are a simple way to encourage those who want to create and implement innovative projects at TU,” said Professor of Marketing Charles Wood, the director of the NOVA Fellowship at TU. “Recognizing Jenkins and Belmaker as NOVA Faculty Fellows celebrates interdisciplinary innovation, something TU is known for and which is a key part of our new strategic plan.”

Black Women’s Poetry

Poet, novelist and literature scholar Jenkins plans to use his NOVA funding to develop a course on Black women’s poetry. Jenkins has been publishing on African American poetry for the past decade and has a manuscript nearly completed on Black poetry since the end of the Civil Rights era. In fact, his essay “’re: Source’: African Contexts of Nathaniel Mackey’s Ethics” won the Joe Weixlmann Prize for best essay on a twentieth- or twenty-first century topic in the African American Review in 2017.

“My new course will examine the work and cultural/historical context of contemporary Anglophone writers from North America, including the United States, Canada and the Caribbean, who share common cultural history as well as innovative approaches to their poetics, both in terms of style, artistic process and content,” Jenkins explained. “To my knowledge, having taught at TU now for 18 years, no course on this topic has been taught before.”

Humans as Environmental Engineers: Agriculture to Energy

A specialist in the areas of climate change and human-environment interactions, Belmaker received funding to develop a new 4000- and 6000-level course entitled Humans as Environmental Engineers: Agriculture to Energy.” This course will empower students to explore the complex ways human culture, economy and demographics affect ecology, climate change and global sustainability challenges.

“I want to challenge students to integrate studies from a wide range of disciplines, social, historical and geographical sciences,” said Belmaker. “Doing so will enable them to gain an overview of the ecological dimension of global economic processes, with a long-term, historical perspective.” In order to promote innovation, Belmaker’s new course will present a highly interdisciplinary topic emphasizing debate, discussion and critical thinking of a controversial topic through extensive audio-visual materials and digital resources. Belmaker anticipates that her course will have a wide appeal to various university programs within TU’s strategic plan. She also foresees an associated public symposium to present the topic to a wider audience on campus and beyond.

Do you have an idea for a project within your field of study? Visit the NOVA Fellowship’s page to learn more about the NOVA Innovation Fund program and fill out your application!