Jennifer Byram

Jennifer Byram is a Ph.D. student in Archaeology in the School of Anthropology. She received an MSc. from the University of Oxford in Visual, Material, and Museum Anthropology in 2015 and a B.A. from Franklin University Switzerland in Visual & Communication Arts and French Studies in 2014. Jennifer is originally from Chicago and previously worked for six years for her tribe as a Research Associate in the Choctaw Nation Historic Preservation department. There she started the Choctaw Traditional Textiles community, shared research on Choctaw history and materiality through various public outreach venues, and facilitated collaborations with tribal, domestic, and international museums.

Building upon her collaborative research with the Choctaw Traditional Textiles community, Jennifer's PhD research will address variability in Southeastern U.S. Indigenous textile and basketry traditions from archaeological and ethnographic collections. Her research will also contribute to conservation efforts in the Southeast where ongoing collaborations between tribal governments and government agencies increasingly focus on important basketry plants like rivercane which have been core to Indigenous traditions for countless generations.