Welcome Dr. Matt Emerson! Our New Assistant Department Chair of Humanities

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Dr. Matt Emerson to the Department of Humanities team. Matt joins us as the Assistant Department Chair of Humanities, joining Dr. Michele Hinton-Riley, Chair. Matt has previously served as a part-time faculty member in the humanities. Matt received his PhD from the University of California-Berkeley, and he has taught anthropology, history and archaeology at the University of California, Princeton University, Carleton College and Southern Illinois University(SIU). At SIU he was the director of a nationally certified archaeology field school. Matt’s administrative experience includes community outreach, university research & curricula review, retention & mentoring, off-campus program assessment, IT and facilities development and admissions.



Matt’s research interests include the archaeology of historic period settlements and the African Diaspora. His dissertation, Decorated Clay Tobacco Pipes from the Chesapeake, identified pipes recovered from seventeenth-century sites in Virginia as the earliest evidence of African craftsmanship in the New World. He continues to write about African influences in New World based on recent ethnographic work among the Northern Edoid speaking peoples in Nigeria, a minority group with a long history in the Atlantic slave trade.



Please join me in welcoming Matt to the team!