Emma Gilheany (2021)

Emma Gilheany is a doctoral candidate in Anthropology at the University of Chicago. She studies indigenous sovereignty, settler colonialism, American imperialism, and the recent history of the circumpolar North. She is particularly interested in using archaeological epistemologies to intersect with and serve Inuit sovereignty.

Her dissertation explores 20th-century processes of missionization and militarization in Nunatsiavut. She uses archaeological, ethnographic, historical, and multimedia methodologies to rethink how resistance to imperialism has been theorized using the material record, and to critique the concept of a global Anthropocene. She argues that climate histories should include hyper-local approaches, illuminating specific institutions responsible for environmental decay, while nuancing the experiences of people who have been figured as vulnerable in the context of the melting North.

The 2021 NISS Dissertation Grant will support remote interviews and long-distance collaboration with Nunatsiavummiut, as well as archival research at the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem Pennsylvania. Prior to the University of Chicago, she earned a B.A. in Anthropology from Columbia University.