The University announced Kim TallBear’s appointment as the provost’s Distinguished Visiting Faculty Fellow for the 2022-2023 academic year on March 14.
TallBear will join Penn from the University of Alberta, where she is a professor in the Faculty of Native Studies and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society. She is also a citizen of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Native American tribe, which has its reservation in South Dakota.
TallBear’s research interests center around how genealogical characteristics and DNA analysis results affect indigenous communities. During her career, TallBear has authored — either in full or in part — six books, nine articles, and four journal papers.
Her 2013 book, Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science, explores the meaning of being Native American from a genealogical perspective and the importance of drawing more than genetic connections between indigenous people. In other works, she also discusses the lasting effects European colonization had on Native culture.
During her time at Penn, TallBear’s responsibilities include mentoring students, speaking on panels, advising on research projects, and giving at least one public presentation on her studies.
TallBear made her first appearance as a Distinguished Visiting Faculty Fellow by giving the annual Provost’s Lecture on Diversity titled Beyond Inclusion and Reconciliation to Decolonization in Science Technology on March 15.
Distinguished Visiting Faculty Fellows are tasked with enriching the intellectual and cultural landscape of the Penn community. The three prior professors in the Visiting Faculty Fellowships program, which started in the 2019-2020 academic year, have all reviewed racial disparities in their past research.
Interim Provost Beth A. Winkelstein and Vice Provost for Faculty Laura Perna selected TallBear for the position. She succeeds Michele Bratcher Goodwin, a pioneer of health law and the current Abraham Pinanski Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
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