The Department of Anthropology is pleased to welcome Assistant Professor Huatse Gyal and Assistant Professor Vivian Chenxue Lu.
Dr. Huatse Gyal is an anthropologist, writer, and filmmaker whose works explores the interdependent relationships between land, language, and community, focusing on state environmentalism and climate change, as well as an interdisciplinary approach to land-based indigenous revitalization movements in a global context. He is currently adapting his dissertation, entitled, “The Remaking of Home, Community, and Self: Rangeland Fencing, Resettlement, and the Resilience of Tibetan Pastoralists” into a book. Dr. Gyal has recently directed a feature-length documentary film, entitled Khata, a popular ceremonial scarf used as a gift on many occasions in the Himalayan world that will be released in September 2023. Prior to joining Rice University, he was Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Museum Studies at Sichuan University.
Vivian Chenxue Lu is an anthropologist whose work focuses on the cultural politics of markets, transnational commerce, and diaspora. Lu's first book manuscript (in progress) traces the extensive commercial migration of Igbo Nigerian businessmen across the Middle East and Asia. She has received research support from the National Science Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Prior to Rice, she was an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Fordham University, an African Studies Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University, a Race and Ethnicity Studies Graduate Fellow at Stanford University, and a visiting Ph.D. student at the University of Lagos (Nigeria). She is currently the “Mobility, Migration, and Borders” sub-theme co-chair for the African Studies Association (US), and is also involved in the Association for Feminist Anthropology and the Lagos Studies Association.