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Clara Atwell
Undergrad Research and Writing
During my time at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, I had the privilege of working with faculty in the Anthropology and Geography Department on three diverse research projects spanning remote sensing, feminist anthropology, and human behavioral ecology in addition to my coursework. These experiences have provided me with a strong foundation in qualitative and quantitative research methods, writing, and interdisciplinary collaboration. In Spring of 2023, I was recognized by the Social Sciences Department as the outstanding graduate in Anthropology and Geography.
This year-long remote sensing research project aimed to provide insight into the spatial aspects of Peru's forest transition through quantifying eucalyptus and pine land cover in Taucamarca, Peru using Arc GIS Pro's integrated deep learning packages.
My education in cultural anthropology focused on the works of queer, feminist, BIPOC, and non-Western medical scholars. These works have taught me to understand how one’s culture and global systems of power impact their lived experience. This has made me a more kind, thoughtful, and curious global citizen.
The following works are some of the most personal projects I've worked on and shared publicly. They examine grief and queerness respectively through a cultural lens.
Dissecting traditional narratives of international development and "progress" has been a central focus of my college career. Beyond my concentration in global studies and international development, I spent three years in Cal Poly's Critical Global Engagements Club, leading the club my junior year, took outside courses in the modern/ colonial hisotry of the Middle East and Latin America and participated in Omprakash's Education through Global Engagement course in 2021. The following projects have been critical in my journey of unlearning Western notions of progress and redefining development .
Between January 2021 and May 2022, I worked on a nine-person student-led research team investigating the evolutionary reasons why parents lie to their children. Our final poster was presented at the California Workshop of Evolutionary Social Sciences in May 2022.
This project was my final for my first GIS class in Winter of 2021. In this study, I aimed to visually represent the meaning of “local food” through mapping the network between Central Coast CSA, SLO Veg, growers and customers, ultimately allowing CSA consumers to be one step closer to knowing both their farmer and their food.