Michele Ruth Gamburd, Author at The Anthropology Career Readiness Network

About Michele Ruth Gamburd (Edit profile)

Michele Ruth Gamburd is Professor of Anthropology at Portland State University. A cultural anthropologist, she focuses on issues of power, politics, and gender in a Sinhala-speaking village in southwestern Sri Lanka. Her most recent book, Linked Lives: Elder Care, Migration, and Kinship in Sri Lanka (2021), addresses issues of aging, demographic transformation, and changing intergenerational obligations in rural families.

What do anthropology instructors, students, and partners gain from a community-based research project?

After an epically disappointing experience with AI-generated essays, I realized that the term paper was as dead as a doornail. I needed an alternative assignment and chose a term-long community-based research project. During the fall of 2025, I worked with Portland State University’s Director of Emergency Management (PSU-EM), the Community Preparedness Manager at the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management (PBEM), and the Anthropology Career Readiness Network (ACRN) to implement a client-based class project. To commemorate the five-year anniversary of the 2020 Labor Day Fires in Oregon, 22 students in Anthropology 412/512, Ethnographic Methods, sought to understand people’s awareness of and preparedness [...]