Robert Fournier graduated from VCU in May of 2001 and is currently a 6 th year PhD candidate at Stanford University, focusing on linguistic phylogeny in the Anthropological Sciences Department. His current work draws upon biology, genetics, linguistics, and archaeology to examine the early history of Indo-European languages as they relate to the Celtic subgroup, but he acknowledges that he would not be where he is today were it not for his education at VCU.

As someone who “has always been interested in what people do,” his initial academic course shifted ultimately from history to anthropology because of the field’s multidisciplinary approach and the emphasis on the lives of ordinary people. Thinking back, he explains that, “I was surprised by the breadth of background of the faculty… and enjoyed being exposed to faculty who study several different areas of the world as opposed to one focus area.” In the kind of multi-faceted work he is doing now, the opportunity afforded him at VCU to study such a vast array of topics within and outside of the field of anthropology has proven extremely useful.

In particular, he feels immense gratitude for the guidance of Dr. Christina Turner and her requirement that students be able to write a good paper, which he says has proven to be one of the most prized abilities that he brought to his postgraduate studies. Fournier also points out the opportunity to present papers at conferences, a study abroad trip to Barbados, and a “profoundly intriguing” course on national identity taught by Dr. Linde-Laursen as being integral to his academic and personal development.

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When questioned about the relevance of anthropology in today’s world, Robert fondly recounts his own intellectual epiphany in which as a young creationist his “eyes were opened to the evidence of human evolution,” as a result of taking a class on human origins. “After that I was hooked on Anthropology.”