Shannon Lee Dawdy

Shannon Lee Dawdy is an American anthropologist, historian, and archaeologist. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Chicago, a MacArthur Fellow, and founder of the Future Café Network, a nonprofit that promotes grassroots futurism. , Science, Psychology Today , Archaeology , and various podcasts.

Education Dawdy holds a PhD in anthropology and history and an MA in history from the University of Michigan, an MA in anthropology from the College of William and Mary and a BA in anthropology from Reed College.

Research, Writing, and Awards Dawdy taught in the Department Anthropology at the University of Chicago from 2004 to 2025 where she was a Full Professor and served as department chair, as well as co-Director of 3CT (Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory). She now works as an independent author and director of the Future Café Network. Geographically, her fieldwork has centered on the Americas, with a special focus on New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. , informal economies , piracy, urban landscapes, death , disaster , and cultural conceptions of time, including the far future . Her most recent publications examine contemporary life through the lens of archaeology, including the edited volume Undoing Things: How Objects, Bodies and Worlds Come Apart (2025, Routledge), and an award-winning book and related documentary film, American Afterlives: Reinventing Death in the Twenty-first Century (2021, Princeton) and I Like Dirt. (2021, with co-director Daniel Zox). She writes for both academic and general audiences. Dawdy has authored or co-edited seven books and published over 60 articles and book chapters. Her work has received honors and support from several major organizations, including the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation. In 2008 she received the John L. Cotter Award from the Society for Historical Archaeology for her early contributions to the field.