Vancouver Summer Program

This page may seem out of touch with the rest of the site, but it is homework for my journalism course so here we go… “You can say ‘I have to do this blog because my annoying journalism professor told me to’ that’s completely okay.” ~ the journalism professor. I Read more

Beaty Biodiversity Museum

Housed in a deceiving small building, the Beaty Biodiversity Museum is home to a large cavernous underground exhibition area – in part to prevent direct sunlight from its collections and in part to allow for more open space on ground level. Its flagship exhibit is of course the huge blue Read more

UBC’s Museum of Anthropology

The often overlooked history of indigenous peoples in North America and their exploitation by Europeans is still a contentious issue in Canada. As history museums are usually conservative, a safe way to explore indigenous cultures is by visiting UBC’s Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. They have a huge collection that Read more

Language and Culture

A language is defined as a system of communication used by a particular nation or people group (Gessner 2017). There is no consensus on the over 100 definitions of culture by anthropologists, but it is widely accepted as “a web of meaning which human beings weave and in which are Read more

The Invisible Wall

After discussing the media’s coverage of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent German reunification, I thought it’d be interesting to explore my own perspective on the current state of Berlin after 20 years of reunification. “Asking if the unification of Germany was ‘complete’ is the Read more

Some…

Some call it beer, I call it inspiration. After a long hard weekend of work and fun I’m finally breaking out a Molson’s and feeling very inspired. Yesterday, I drove all the way to Squamish to admire the beautiful show-topped mountains in summer and watch the perfect sunset on a Read more

Is entertainment news…news?

Every morning at 8:30am the journalism professor would ask us to bring up interesting stories from the past 24 hours. Today, Anthony Bourdain died and the Beckhams were falsely rumoured to be planning a divorce. This got me thinking: is entertainment news actually news? I was fascinated by late president Read more

Cultural Relativism

I learned about Franz Boaz in my linguistic anthropology class and thought about his warnings on ethnocentrism when he researched linguistic anthropology in the US. I had many experiences of cross-cultural conflict in my lifetime having lived on three continents, yet I didn’t have a specific word to describe this Read more