Carla Sinopoli

Carla M. Sinopoli joins the University New Mexico as Director of the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology and Professor of Anthropology.  An archaeologist specializing in South Asia, her survey and excavation projects in southern India examine the political economy of the 2nd millennium CE imperial capital of Vijayanagara and emergent sociopolitical inequalities in the second and first millennia BCE Iron Age. In addition to her archaeological work, Sinopoli’s research interests also include the history of university museums and anthropological collecting.  She is the author or editor of 10 books and dozens of articles and her work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for Humanities, National Geographic Society, and Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, among others.

Sinopoli comes to UNM from the University of Michigan, where she was a professor of anthropology and curator of Asian collections in the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology.  As curator, she conducted research, developed exhibitions, and published on archaeological, ethnographic, and photographic collections from the Indian Himalayas, China, and Southeast Asia.  Her final curatorial project at Michigan is a collaborative co-curated exhibition of Anishinaabe baskets from the Great Lakes that is scheduled to open at the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinaabe Culture and Lifeways in Mount Pleasant Michigan in spring 2019.  In addition to her curatorial work, Sinopoli served as director of the UM Museum of Anthropological Archaeology from 2005-2011 and directed Michigan’s Museum Studies Program from 2012-2018.