Ana Croegaert, Dissertation Fellow

Ana Croegaert Alumnae Dissertation Fellow, 2005

Ph.D. Anthropology, Northwestern University; Assistant Professor, University of New Orleans My work aims to bridge scholarly and popular publics by creating spaces for people to explore and debate migration and ways of belonging in 21st century cities thru their interactions with images, sound and artifacts drawn from ethnographic research. Inequality and identity formations are core themes in my work.

I have conducted fieldwork in the United States and in former Yugoslavia. In addition to my current academic appointment in Anthropology and Urban Studies at the University of New Orleans, I’ve held a postdoctoral fellowship with The Field Museum in Chicago, where I drafted and co-directed the first phase of a new collections initiative on 21st Century Urban Material Cultures. I have been a Visiting Professor in Gender Studies at Mount Holyoke College (MA) and at Loyola University (IL), and I have over 5 years of experience working in the governmental and non-profit sectors in Chicago.

My peer-reviewed publications can be found in American Anthropologist (2011) and Identities (2010), and my popular writing can be found in The Global Health Reader (2009) and Anthropology News (2011).

Impact of the Alumnae Dissertation Fellowship:

The Alumnae of Northwestern awarded my dissertation research an Alumnae Dissertation Fellowship in 2005, providing essential support to writing up the findings of my two years of ethnographic fieldwork exploring the impacts of war and displacement on a cohort of refugees relocated from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Chicago, IL, and examining this group’s attempts to alter their circumstances. I earned my PhD in Anthropology, with a Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies, in 2007, and the findings from my research have been published in my discipline’s flagship journal, in other peer-reviewed journals and anthologies, and in a book manuscript, Gathering Grounds: The pathos and promise of forced migration (currently under review for publication). The writing year fellowship was absolutely critical to my progress in my program, and in forwarding the publication stage of my research. I was a single parent during my entire graduate school career, and I did not receive any financial support from my son’s father. Like so many women in similar circumstances, my career could easily have been derailed—at least temporarily—by the necessity of paying monthly living expenses. The Alumnae Fellowship provided not only financial support during this tough period in my life, but in supporting the research in this way, The Alumnae also validated the need for rigorous, ethnographic scholarship that documents gender inequity and its relationship to citizenship and belonging, and contributes to scholarly and public debates that address the need to end social and economic inequities. Thank you for this opportunity to express my gratitude to The Alumnae of Northwestern University!