Raul Basilio (Class of 2017)

Raul Basilio is a Ph.D. candidate in Ecological Anthropology at the University of Georgia, Athens. He began his academic journey at Riverside City College in California before transferring in 2016 to the University of South Alabama, where he completed his bachelor’s degree in anthropology with a minor in sociology.

At USA, Raul was introduced to the four subfields of anthropology and discovered his passion for cultural anthropology. Reflecting on his time there, he says: “I will never forget the intellectually stimulating activities in Dr. Mark Moberg, Dr. Phil Carr, Dr. Lesley Gregoricka, and Dr. Gregory Waselkov’s classes that shaped my training in American Anthropology.” Under the mentorship of Dr. Mark Moberg, he collaborated with Southeast Asian and Latin American communities in Mobile and along the Alabama Gulf Coast. In his final semester, he met Dr. Denise Lewis (USA alum and retired professor at the University of Georgia), with whom he worked as an ethnographer on an NSF-funded project investigating the challenges faced by Southeast Asian refugees and the resilient strategies they develop in response to environmental hazards.

In 2018, Raul entered the Ph.D. program at the University of Georgia. He is advised by Dr. Donald R. Nelson and is a member of the Human-Environmental Change Lab. For his dissertation research, Raul conducted two years of fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, investigating how environmental contamination arises and affects both human and more-than-human lives in a socially diverse urban landscape. At the University of Georgia, he has worked as a Teaching Assistant for several anthropology courses and as a Research Assistant in Dr. Lewis’s lab. More recently, he began teaching Introduction to Anthropology courses as an adjunct instructor at Oxford College of Emory. He expects to graduate with his Ph.D. in May 2026 and is currently looking for academic job opportunities.

Raul’s advice for students: “Take every opportunity you can, even when it feels risky. Be brave and persistent, even when things don’t seem to be going in your favor. Stay curious! Explore different areas of anthropology and attend as many guest lectures as possible—you never know whose ideas might change your life.”