North Carolina State University

Post-Doc, Sociology & Anthropology

Postdoctoral Teaching Scholar

About

Matthew C. Watson received his B.A. in anthropology and Spanish from Grinnell College in 2003 and his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Florida in 2010.  He is a Latin Americanist cultural anthropologist and science and technology studies (STS) scholar researching the ethics and politics of historical knowledge production.  His current ethnographic and archival project presents the first intensive analysis of Maya hieroglyphic decipherment as a public and postcolonial science.  The project examines themes including scientific and artistic imaging practices, public engagement with science, and the present ethical and political consequences of representing the ancient Maya.

More broadly, his work questions contemporary scholars' efforts to rethink the status of "nonhumans" such as technologies and animals in existing structures of political and scientific representation.  This research considers how we might conceive structures of representation that better account for the roles of past actors manifest in the present as memories, artifacts, texts, or spirits.  In other words, what does it mean to coexist in the present with the past?

More information on Dr. Watson's research is available on his personal website: http://www.matthewcwatson.org/research

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