Director: Kisha Supernant

Dr. Kisha Supernant (Métis/Papaschase/British) is the Director of the Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology and a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta. An award-winning teacher, researcher, and writer, her research interests include the relationship between cultural identities, landscapes, and the use of space, Métis archaeology, and heart-centered archaeological practice. Her research with Indigenous communities (including Métis and First Nations) in western Canada explores how archaeologists and communities can build collaborative research relationships. She leads the Exploring Métis Identity Through Archaeology (EMITA), a collaborative research project which takes a relational approach to exploring the material past of Métis communities, including her own family, in western Canada.  She is currently a co-director of a new interdisciplinary research project on Métis kinscapes of Lac Ste Anne, Alberta with a team of Indigenous scholars, as well as a co-investigator on Cartographies of Deep Time, a recently funded SSHRC Insight Grant project that explores the complexities of history and different ways of knowing with Tsimshian communities in British Columbia. Over the past several years, she has been increasingly engaged in helping First Nations communities in Western Canada use remote sensing technologies to locate and protect unmarked burials. She has published in local and international journals on GIS in archaeology, collaborative archaeological practice, Métis archaeology, and indigenous archaeology in the post-TRC era. In the past few years, she has been named to the Royal Society of Canada's College of News Scholars, Artists, and Scientists and Edmonton’s Top 40 under 40 by Avenue Magazine. She is also co-director of the Situated Knowledges: Indigenous Peoples and Place University of Alberta Signature Area and the Vice-President of the Indigenous Heritage Circle. Recently, she was appointed to the National Advisory Committee on Missing Children and Unmarked Graves. 

In 2020, Dr. Supernant was co-editor on two volumes: Archaeologies of the Heart with Springer and Blurring Timescapes, Subverting Erasure: Remembering Ghosts on the Margins of Historyy with Berghahn Books.

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