Sonja Dobroski

I am a sociocultural anthropologist with expertise in settler colonial theory, material culture, and Native American studies. My research focuses on how material culture functions in settler colonial societies, paying specific attention to how power is maintained via materiality. I am interested in interlinking historical, archaeological, and anthropological methods. My work combines oral history, ethnography, museum, and archival research.

My current research takes a comparative approach by drawing on archaeological collections from Roman Britain and Gaul to examine how settler populations in the past and the present have used the material culture of Indigenous communities.

I recevied my PhD from the Unviersity of St Andrews in June 2021. Prior to this I completed a master's degree in Archaeology at the University of Oxford and a master's degree in American Indian Studies at the University of California Los Angeles.

I am an international research collaborator on the Kone Foundation funded project, Omia, lainata, varastaa? Alkuperäiskansakulttuurien käyttö Suomessa läpi 1900-luvun (Own, Borrow, Steal?: The Appropriation of Indigenous cultures in Finland throughout the 20th Century). 

settler colonial theory, material culture, nationalism, semiotics, myth of the American West, Native American studies, Indigenous futurisms, museums & heritage, social history & ethnography of the Western United States. 

I am the Teaching & Learning Lead for the Department of Social Anthropology

My teaching reflects my interdisciplinary background by employing a mixed methodological and theoretical approach. In my teaching, in addition to anthropology, I often draw on pedagogies and literatures from history, archaeology, and Native American and Indigenous studies. 

Teaching 2024/25: 

SOAN10321 Key Ideas 

SOAN20830 Anthropological Theory: Dark Anthropology 

SOAN30610 Dissertation Seminar