Study 3 Team
Memorialization, Contested Knowledge, and the Sociopsychological Impacts of Disinformation in the Context of COVID-19
(2022-2025)
Principal Investigators
Sarah E Wagner, Principal Investigator
Professor of Anthropology, The George Washington University
Sarah Wagner is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research focuses on post-conflict societies, memory, forensic science applied in the wake of war, and, most recently, on COVID-19 death and mourning. In the fall of 2021, she led a team of GWU students geolocating flags for the In America: Rememberinstallation.
roy richard grinker, co-pi
Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs,
The George Washington University
Roy Grinker conducts cross-cultural research on mental illness, developmental disorders, and stigma. He is currently studying grief, mourning, and memorialization in the COVID-19 pandemic. He is the author of Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness.
Joel KuIpers, co-pi
Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs,
The George Washington University
Joel Kuipers has carried out extensive ethnographic analyses of the role of language in “troubles” in the eastern Indonesian island of Sumba, in US psychiatric clinics, U.S. science classrooms, COVID related Zoom funerals, and among teenage cell phone users. His current work focuses on how claims and assumptions about memorializations of COVID victims are contested, debated and inscribed.
LEEN ALFATAFTA, PROJECT MANAGER
PhD Candidate, Sociocultural Anthropology,
The George Washington University
Leen Alfatafta is pursuing a PhD in sociocultural anthropology, and is particularly interested in visual anthropology. Her research is based in Jordan and examines issues of precarity, gender relations and moral economies in migrant communities. Leen is also training in photography and filmmaking. She is currently the project manager for the Rituals in the Making research project.
RESEARCH Consultants
TEAM MEMBERS
Read Team Bios
Study 2 Team
Death in an Age of Misinformation
(2021-2022)
Principal Investigators
ROY RICHARD GRINKER (PI)
Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, The George Washington University
JOEL C. KUIPERS
(Co-PI)
Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, The George Washington University
JORGE BENAVIDES-RAWSON (Co-PI)
PhD Candidate, Medical Anthropology, The George Washington University
TEAM ALUMNI
Study 1 Team
Funerary Practices, Pandemic Confinement,
and the Implications for COVID-19 Transmission
(2020-2021)
Principal Investigators
SARAH E. WAGNER (PI)
Professor of Anthropology, The George Washington University
ROY RICHARD GRINKER (Co-PI)
Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, The George Washington University
JOEL C. KUIPERS
(Co-PI)
Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, The George Washington University
DEVIN PROCTOR
(Co-PI)
Assistant Professor of Anthropology,
Elon University
JORGE BENAVIDES-RAWSON (Co-PI)
PhD Candidate, Medical Anthropology, The George Washington University
TARIQ ADLEY
(Project Manager)
Graduate Student,
The George Washington University
Special Consultants
REV. ANTHONY
EVANS
President,
The National Black
Church Initiative
REV. SHELDON WILLIAMS
President,
The National Black Religious Broadcasters
TEAM ALUMNI
Rituals in the Making 