Kate Syfert

Geographic Information Science IGERT
State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo


I am a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology, where my disciplinary focus is cultural anthropology and my research focus is the intersection of technology and society. I am working with Dr. Charles Frake, and am finishing my fourth year as an IGERT fellow. I earned a BA in Anthropology and Religion from Syracuse University, where I had the opportunity to conduct fieldwork with Hmong refugees in central New York. I earned my MA from SUNY Buffalo, focusing on notions of culture in cognitive geographic research.

My research interests include gender, society and computing, and internet communities as a locus for ethnographic research. I have a continuing interest in Japan, and have conducted research on apology in Japanese culture, non-native wayfinders in Japan, and the use of biological and chemical weapons by Japanese terrorist organizations. I am currently working on a project investigating conflict resolution among members of an internet community. I will be returning to Japan during the summer of 2003 to work on two projects: an ethnographic study of women working in the GIS field and a visual project documenting the ways that non-Japanese people create senses of place for themselves in Japan. I am also beginning work on my dissertation, a qualitative investigation of women working as GIS professionals.

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