Educational Background
- 2012 PhD Anthropology; University of Iowa, Iowa City
- 2007 M.A. Anthropology, University of Iowa, Iowa City
- 2004 B.A. Anthropology, Fort Lewis College, Durango
Professional Background
Dr. Reynolds specializes in archaeology, a subfield of anthropology that studies past human societies. More specifically, she is a "zooarchaeologist," a type of archaeologist that analyzes faunal/non-human skeletal remains to learn more about what people ate in the past. Dr. Reynolds' zooarchaeological research has explored the ways in which past peoples interacted with their environments, procured and processed their food, and participated in local and national economies. She has worked on archaeological projects for sites across California, North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Kansas, Iowa, and France, but most of her research focuses on early farming communities in the northern U.S. Southwest.
Over the past decade, much of her scholarship has focused upon teaching and education, and she served as Chair of the Faculty Teaching and Learning Center from 2017-2021. She finds immense joy in working with colleagues and students to create learning environments that foster critical thinking, deep learning, and meaningful exchanges of knowledge.
Cerisa loves learning, conducting research, and writing, and her work has been featured in numerous outlets including Signature Magazine, Southwestern Lore, Anthropology News, Teaching Anthropology, Anthropozoologica, Journal of Contemporary Anthropology, Colorado Archaeology, Current Research in the Pleistocene, and Pushing the Envelope: Experimental Directions in the Archaeology of Stone Tools. Her current research projects focus on the persistence of myths and misinformation in textbooks, resource pressure in the face of population growth and environmental crises, and historic dining on Union Pacific railcars.
Personal Interests
In addition to conducting scholarly research and writing, Cerisa's hobbies include reading, listening to podcasts, doing yoga, watching TV, building with Lego bricks, event and trip planning, overlanding, camping . . . and more reading.