Graduate Assistant
August 2024–present
Chunfen Zhou is the current AFS graduate assistant and is also a Ph.D. student in folklore at Indiana University Bloomington. His research interests include material culture in small-scale societies, especially southwest China; forming of natural history museum collections; and evolutionary approaches to human behavior.
Despite being born in Shanghai, China, a metropolis of over 25 million people, he developed an early interest in natural history, which led him to a B.S. in biology (Central South University, China). Fascinated by how biological theories such as Darwinian evolution can shed light on human diversity, he went on to obtain a M.S. in anthropology (University of Utah), from which he learned about the equally diverse cultural life of Homo sapiens, particularly its material aspects. Interested in how the intersection of nature and culture is reflected in artifacts and how human stories can be told through such objects, he got a M.A. in museum studies (New York University) and worked for two years as an anthropology intern at Milwaukee Public Museum. There, he was involved in conducting collections-based research, writing exhibit labels, and helping with the reinstallation of a display of a minority people from southwest China, among other responsibilities. He was also a participant in the 2024 Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology held by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
Zhou is also a part-time translator for the academic journal Nature, for which he has translated more than 50 articles in archaeology and anthropology from English to Chinese. When he is not working, he enjoys city walks in quaint historic neighborhoods or vibrant public spaces, as well as hikes along running waters or above tree lines. Needless to say, he also loves exploring museums, and he has visited more than 120 museums with archaeological and ethnographic collections in China and the U.S. At the AFS, he will assist with a variety of tasks such as updating their website and helping reorganize their storage room.
