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Assistant Professor
University of Southern Maine
David Shane Lowry is an anthropologist and citizen of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. He was Senior Fellow in the School of Social Policy at Brandeis University in 2022-23. In 2021-22, he was Distinguished Fellow in Native American Studies at MIT. In this role, David led a new conversation at MIT about the responsibilities of MIT (and science/technology education, more generally) in the theft of American Indian land and the dismantling of American Indian health and community. Since 2013, David has lectured across the United States – roles in which he has become well versed in conversations at the intersection of Native America, race, and science/health. His first book, titled Lumbee Pipelines: American Indian movement in the residue of settler colonialism (University of Nebraska Press), explores American Indian utilization of colonial conditions to create opportunities that are both uplifting and oppressive. (He pays some attention to the Lumbee community's relationships with corporate chicken farming.) He is beginning a book with MIT Press titled Indigenous MIT: the origins of science and technology in American genocide. David is a graduate of MIT (S.B.) and UNC-Chapel Hill (M.A. and Ph.D.). His graduate work was funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF-GRF). He enters University of Southern Maine this Fall as Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Native American Studies.