Chair
Administration and Staff


Associate Chair
Director, Center for the Study of Human Origins

Director of Undergraduate Studies
Director of Graduate Studies
Director, MS Program in HSB/Global Coordinator

Director, Certificate Program in Culture and Media
Director, Center for Media, Culture, and History

Department Administrator
marta.arroyo@nyu.edu; (212) 988-8554
Marta Arroyo has over 15 years of non-profit administrative experience. She has experience managing grants, budgets, creating policies and procedures and training staff. She has a BA in Spanish and Anthropology. As the Department Administrator, she will oversee the office operations and administrative staff. She will provide administrative support for the department, administer budgets, as well as oversee registration activities and more. Marta is an animal lover and in her spare time volunteers with the NYC Mayor’s Alliance, where she assists with adoption events.




Supervisor, Laboratory Operations and Facilities
urf1@nyu.edu; (212) 998-3819
Uli has worked in the Anthropology Department for over ten years. He troubleshoots the technology around the
Contact Uli for help with computer matters, audio-visual and telecommunications assistance.
Media Production Specialist and Filmmaker-in-Residence
cheryl.furjanic@nyu.edu; (212) 998-8542
Cheryl Furjanic is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker whose documentary and fiction films have screened at 150+ festivals worldwide and on television. Her most recent film is Stonewall: The Making of a Monument (New York Times Op-Doc, 2019). Her feature documentary, Back on Board: Greg Louganis was broadcast on HBO and nominated for an Emmy Award and Producers Guild of America award in 2016. Her feature documentary Sync or Swim (2008) premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival. Her early short films include A Good Uplift (2003) a documentary about a Lower East Side corset shop and the LGBT film festival hit Bar Talk (2002) a comedy fiction film about women in bars who are too cool to talk to each other. In 2014 she was named to the OUT100—Out Magazine’s list of the most compelling LGBT people of the year. She is currently directing a feature-length documentary called Adventures in Miscarriage. Cheryl has been teaching documentary production in the Culture & Media Program at NYU for over two decades.
LINK TO WEBSITE: https://cherylfurjanic.com/
Associate Director, Center For The Study Of Human Origins
hannah.taboada@nyu.edu; (212) 992-9785
Hannah Taboada has over fifteen years of academic and non-profit administrative experience managing programs, fellowships and grants. She has a background in biological anthropology, having received her BA in Anthropology and Biology from Barnard College and MA in Biological Anthropology from NYU. She has also trained at paleoanthropological research sites in Kenya and Tanzania. As the Associate Director for the Center for the Study of Human Origins (CSHO), Hannah supervises the organization and curation of CSHO’s research and teaching collections, laboratories and equipment; monitors the CSHO and Anthropology MS Human Skeletal Biology operating budgets and the research grants of CSHO faculty and graduate students; provides administrative support to the Center and its faculty; purchases research equipment and laboratory supplies; supervises graduate and undergraduate students working in the labs; coordinates the CSHO lecture series and special events; maintains the Center’s website; and oversees and develops CSHO outreach activities.
Center for Media, Culture
pegi.vail@nyu.edu; (212) 998-3759
Pegi Vail is an anthropologist (PhD 2004, NYU), filmmaker, and curator whose academic work has focused on visual anthropology, Indigenous media and on the role of storytelling to the political economy of global tourism. She is the Co-Director at New York University’s Center for Media, Culture and History. Her award-winning documentary Gringo Trails looks at the long term cultural and environmental effects of travel and tourism. The film has been broadcast and released theatrically in the USA and internationally. Vail teaches documentary filmmaking through the NYU Department of Anthropology’s Program in Culture and Media and has previously taught in NYU's Performance Studies Program as well Columbia University's Anthropology Department. She is a former Fulbright scholar who has lectured on travel study tours with National Geographic and Smithsonian, and is a seasoned lecturer on tourism and visual anthropology at museums and universities internationally. As a curator, she has collaborated with colleagues at NYC arts and cultural institutions such as the National Museum of the American Indian, American Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and through organizations such as the The Moth, the storytelling collective she was a founding board member and curator for, and storytelling alumna. Vail serves as a judge for the International Documentary Association Awards and has served as a judge for National Geographic’s World Legacy and World Travel Tourism Council's Tourism for Tomorrow Awards.
More info: pegivail.com
Front Office

Undergraduate Administrative Aide
undergrad.anthro@nyu.edu; (212) 998-8588

Department Administrative Aide
anthropology@nyu.edu; (212) 998-8552
Jaritzi has over 6 years of non-profit experience starting out as client facing staff and transitioning to administration. She has experience in high level strategic, database, and administrative support that has helped run a department/program at a large scale. As the Admin Aide, she will support the department with a broad range of clerical/office duties whether it is revising budgets and invoices, maintaining office supplies, and creating/up keeping spreadsheets etc. In her spare time, Jaritzi enjoys running and exploring different parts of the city, just to name a few.

Graduate Administrative Aide
grad.anthro@nyu.edu; (212) 988-8553
Toni-Ann has over 4 years of office experience, starting from working as an Administrative Aide at the Bronx County Supreme Court to working as an Office Assistant for the College of Arts and Science Undergraduate Advising Center. While working as an Office Assistant, she acquired a BA in English and American Literature from NYU, greatly increasing her writing, editing, and proofreading skills. As an Administrative Aid for Graduate students, Toni-Ann's responsibilities include, but are not limited to, graduate course scheduling, award logistics, admissions, time-to-degree paperwork, dissertation processing, website updates and social media and all graduate events, and regular advisement schedules. Her hobbies include making 3D art, writing, and reading.
Student Employees

