Biography
Ryan Hechler is a fifth-year Anthropology PhD student. He holds an Anthropology MA from McGill University and History and Art History BAs from Virginia Commonwealth University. He studies the development of late Pre-Columbian Barbacoan identity and complexity in Ecuador and transitional colonial experiences under the Inkas and Spanish via archaeology and ethnohistory. He is a director and founder of the Proyecto Arqueológico Cochasquí-Mojanda in Ecuador’s northern highlands, an Institute for Field Research-affiliated project. Since 2016, he studies Cusco Quechua supported by the US Department of Education’s Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship, and is learning Cha’palaachi, a Barbacoan language. Additionally, he investigates late Pre-Columbian to Early Spanish Colonial transformations of Andean notions of difference and disability. He is a Project Director for Statistical Research, Inc.’s Albuquerque office, a Research Associate of University of New Mexico’s Latin American & Iberian Institute, and Chair of the Society for American Archaeology’s Student Affairs Committee.