Siobhán M. Mattison, MA, PhC
About Me: I am a fourth-year graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington. I am currently engaged in dissertation research among the matrilineal Mosuo of Southwest China. My research aims to discover whether Mosuo kinship and inheritance have been affected by the recent emergence of a local market economy driven by ethnic tourism. More broadly, I am interested in how families and larger kinship networks shape the decisions made by their individual members. I hope that understanding family structure and operations will inform efforts to understand broader institutions, including governments. Finally, I hope that my research will contribute to debates that question how certain family compositions affect children’s welfare.
Other Interests: I believe in a multi-level approach to studying human behavior, and have drawn from a number of disciplines in shaping my research. I was a pre-doctoral fellow of the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology and am currently working toward a certificate in Statistics from the Center for Statistics and Social Sciences at the University of Washington. I have also drawn much inspiration from my colleagues in other sub-fields of anthropology, especially socio-cultural anthropology, whose work complements and elaborates my own. I have worked throughout my career to foster collaborations among social scientists of different backgrounds, and have sought to develop friendships with colleagues at home and abroad who are willing to share their unique insights.
Copyright Siobhán M. Mattison - All content on this website belongs to Siobhan M. Mattison unless otherwise noted. Do not cite without author’s permission.
Image Copyright 2008, American Anthropological Association (credit: Peter M. Mattison)