Ann Reed

Ann Reed is a practicing cultural anthropologist currently working in the field of UX/CX research in the health insurance industry. She has taught numerous courses in cultural anthropology, international studies, and African & African American studies at the University of North Dakota, University of Akron, and Iowa State University. She completed her Ph.D. in Anthropology with a minor in African Studies from Indiana University in 2006 and has longstanding research interests revolving around the interface of culture and the economy.

Ann's long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana (first as an exchange student in 1993-94) has revolved around such topics as: ecotourism development; reflections of fifty years of independence; return-migration of Ghanaians living abroad; impacts of oil and gas development on local communities; and heritage tourism of diaspora Africans. She was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship to carry out the latter research, resulting in the book, Pilgrimage Tourism of Diaspora Africans to Ghana (Routledge).

Ann has also carried out ethnographic research on the socio-cultural impacts of North Dakota's oil boom. She is interested both in how community-level concerns about safety and long-term sustainability measure up with dominant ideas about job opportunities and energy independence as well as how gender connects to labor and power in boomtown contexts globally and locally.

In addition, Ann served as the secretary and a board member for Global Host Project, an NGO that promotes grass roots development and volunteerism in Ghana. GHP has raised money for improving local-level sanitation, income generation, and education. She is interested in continuing to use her anthropological skills to solve real-world problems.