I am an anthropological archaeologist specializing in landscape archaeology and long-term societal and environmental transformation in Atlantic West Africa. My most recent research examines human-related transformations of the environment connected to societal developments in settlement, technology, and subsistence near the Pra River, Southern Ghana. With survey and excavation data spanning over three millennia, my work challenges an older historiography about the nature of African societies in this region before contact with Europeans and the subsequent expansion of the Atlantic slave trade. I have also worked on sites significant to African and African Diaspora history in Sierra Leone, The Gambia, South Africa, Barbados, Florida, and Virginia. In my Engagements classes, I seek to instill in students an appreciation of the value of our shared human history; to impart on them a connection with people living in unfamiliar time periods, places, and social conditions; and to understand the complex, and often hidden ways their lives are inextricably intertwined with the broader global community.