One of six flagship projects of the Planet Texas 2050 Grand Challenge program of the Bridging Barriers Initiative, Stories of Ancient Resilience seeks to deploy research into the responses of past urban societies to climate change and demographic stresses in order to create new ways of imagining our future. The project is led by four co-PIs: Adam Rabinowitz (Classics), Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach (Geography), Dan Breecker (Geosciences), and Melissa Kemp (Integrative Biology). It also involves faculty from the College of Fine Arts and the School of Architecture. Projects range from archaeogenetics and paleoclimate research, to archaeological investigations in the Maya Region, Italy, and on the Danube frontier of the Roman empire, to artistic collaborations and K-12 education.
Interest in questions related to the human past, critical thinking skills, attention to detail. Coursework or training in Classics, Geography, Anthropology, Geosciences (especially in isotope geochemistry), or Integrative Biology (especially in DNA and aDNA) are preferred but not required for all collaborative opportunities.
