Bernadette Boden-Albala, who earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology at Queens College, is the director and founding dean of the University of California, Irvine’s planned School of Population Health. She is a renowned researcher and administrator whose efforts to reduce health disparities for America’s disadvantaged became a blueprint for community-based stroke and heart disease prevention.

Joseph M. Birkmann (Class of 2012)

“I graduated from CUNY Queens College in 2012 with degrees in Anthropology and Philosophy. My time at CUNY Queens provided a solid anthropological foundation for my graduate work at the University of New Mexico, where I study environmental archaeology in the Southwest and Pacific Islands. My dissertation work focuses on geohydrology and agricultural production on the windward side of the island of Hawai`i, in the district of Kohala. Here in the southwest, I am actively engated in UNM projects relating to Paleoamerican – Archaic occupation and land use in northern New Mexico and southern Arizona as well as ongoing UNM research at Chaco Canyon, NM.”

Maria Grbic (Class of 2019) is a registered nurse at Flushing Hospital Medical Center, where she provides culturally sensitive care to the pediatric population and their families. A triple CUNY graduate, Maria had her start studying anthropology at Queens College, with an interest in medical/psychiatric anthropology.

Luis R. Medina (Class of 1996)

“My undergraduate studies at Queens College in the Anthropology department were among the most richly rewarding and intellectually stimulating years of my life. After receiving my undergraduate degree, I went on the Columbia University where I pursued Cultural Anthropology and received an M.A. in the discipline (1997). In 2016, I published a book entitled, “Emotions, Culture and Mental Illness: A Short History Of My Father.” It explores the subject of Puerto Rican culture, mental illness, and the functional dysfunctionality of island life. The book would not have been possible without the education, training, and mentorship I received from the outstanding Anthropology Department faculty at Queens College. I currently live in Colorado Springs, Colorado where I manage an immigration law firm assisting immigrants find legal paths to residency and U.S. citizenship.”

Lisa Modenos is currently a Lecturer Advisor for the University Without Walls Program, UMass Amherst.

Chu Paing (Class of 2017) is currently a Ph.D. student in the Anthropology Program at University of Colorado at Boulder, where her studies are funded by NSF fellowship. She published an article “To Know a Bāthā: Family Language Socialization among Buddhist Burmese Immigrant Families in New York City” in Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement. The article is based on her senior thesis linguistic anthropology research project carried out in Jackson Heights, Queens which she wrote under the supervision of Prof. Makihara during her senior year at Queens College.

Sebastian Ramirez (Class of 2017) is currently a postdoctoral research associate in Princeton University’s Global Health Program. His research focuses on “internally displaced persons in his native Colombia and the role of healthcare services in an effort to remake ideas of home and citizenship in the aftermath of violence”. For more about Sebastian and his research, follow this link.

Sheikh Rifatullah (Class of 2017) is now an enrollment Medicaid specialist at Healthfirst. He says “I help people who are disabled, chronically ill, and have low income to become Medicaid eligible so they can get medical help. I help them with Medicaid applications, renewals, conversions, and so on. I am also a field agent in addition to an office fish. This means, I travel all over New York City in different boroughs (use my participant observation) and visit my patients to help them. I always apply anthropology.”