Rate My Professor Lynn Sikkink

Lynn Sikkink is Professor of Anthropology in the Natural & Environmental Sciences Department at Western Colorado University. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Minnesota (1994), an MA in Anthropology from the University of Minnesota (1988), and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Colorado (1981). Her doctoral research involved fieldwork in the Andes of Peru and Bolivia, including a six-month Fulbright fellowship in Cochabamba, Bolivia, accompanied by her husband and daughter. Prior to joining Western Colorado University, Sikkink taught at two other universities. At Western, she has introduced students to anthropological fieldwork in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, a region with cultural landscapes paralleling those of Latin America.

Sikkink's research interests center on anthropology as the study of humanity both culturally and biologically across time and space, with fieldwork in the Andes and focus on traditional remedies sold by women in Bolivian marketplaces. Her key publications include the book New Cures, Old Medicines: Women and the Commercialization of Traditional Medicine in Bolivia (2010), which explores women vendors of ethnic medicines; "Landscape, Gender, and Community: Andean Mountain Stories" (1999, with B. Choque); "Water and Exchange: The Ritual of Yaku Cambio as Communal and Competitive Encounter" (1997); "Traditional Medicines in the Marketplace: Identity and Ethnicity among Female Vendors" (2001); "House, Community, and Marketplace: Women as Managers of Exchange Relations and Resources on the Southern Altiplano of Bolivia" (1994); and the recent co-authored article "Socioeconomic Impacts on Andean Adolescents' Growth" (2022). Her scholarly work has accumulated over 200 citations according to Google Scholar. In addition to academic publications, Sikkink has pursued creative writing, publishing an essay in The Smart Set and a short story in Masters Review.