Prof. Sonya Atalay

Sonya Atalay joined the Anthropology Section as a professor in July 2024. Atalay is trained as an anthropological archaeologist and have carried out fieldwork at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük, Turkey and conducted numerous research projects in partnership with rural Turkish and Native American communities to better understand community-based protection and management of cultural sites. Beginning with her first book, Community-Based Archaeology: Research with, by, and for Indigenous and Local Communities (2012, California), the overarching focus of her work in Anthropology and Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) is to understand the ethics and practice of community-based research in partnership with Indigenous Peoples. This is central to my work because being in right relations with communities as we conduct research is essential and the central foundation of ethical research practice.

Atalay is the director and principal investigator of the Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science, a newly established National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center. She has expertise in the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and served two terms on the National NAGPRA Review Committee, first appointed by the Bush administration and then for a second term by the Obama administration. Atalay has produced a series of research-based comics in partnership with Native nations about repatriation of Native American ancestral remains, return of sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony under NAGPRA law. Atalay earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley).