Kathryn A. Kozaitis

Associate Professor and Chair

Ph.D. University of Michigan, 1993

Research Interests: social transformations, cultural politics, intervention theory and methods, community organization, and educational reform ( Greece, North America, Roma Diaspora)

Kathryn A. Kozaitis is an urban anthropologist interested in global-local articulations, particularly in the processes by which economically, politically, and socially subordinated groups use culture to construct security, community, identity, and meaning. Her work with the Roma (Gypsies) in Greece and Greeks in the United States has focused on race, ethnicity, cultural transformation, and conscious adaptations to social marginality. In the last decade, she has been engaged as an applied anthropologist in NSF funded initiatives to improve science and mathematics education in Atlanta. As the ethnographer in the Elementary Science Education Partners (ESEP) project during 1996-2003 she advanced Participatory Reform, a research and development model of institutional policies, organizational practices, and professional partnerships that places culture, equity, and agency as the reference points for sustainable science educational reform. Presently she is engaged as a researcher in Partnerships for Reform in Science and Mathematics (PRISM) to study the process by which PRISM constructs a Participatory Reward Structure that encourages sustainable participation by higher education faculty to improve scientific and mathematical literacy. She teaches courses on anthropological theory and praxis, qualitative research design, human diversity and multiculturalism, ethnic groups and interethnic relations, and urban applied anthropology. Dr. Kozaitis coauthored with Conrad Phillip Kottak ( University of Michigan) On Being Different: Diversity and Multiculturalism in the North American Mainstream, (McGraw-Hill 2003).

Send e-mail to: Dr. Kozaitis