Kailey Rocker

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Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Sociology / Criminology

Breiseth Hall 321
kailey.rocker@wilkes.edu
(570) 408-7723

"I am a cultural anthropologist who specializes in human rights, history and memory, political anthropology, youth cultural production, and material culture. My research in southeastern Europe focuses on how actors in Albania and the Western Balkans negotiate international human rights discourse and democratization in the present to confront the 20th century socialist past and establish futures they desire for themselves, their nation, and their region. In this project, I confront what it means to be human in an increasingly globalized world, faced with the challenging legacies of the past and the continued hold of neoliberalism in this post-Cold War moment.

In addition to introductory and qualitative methods courses in Anthropology, I enjoy teaching courses on history and memory, human rights, Europe and the Balkans, migration, and science fiction. Check out this short story collection that I produced together with students who took my Winter 2025 “Anthropology and Science Fiction” course at Lawrence University: Sci-Fi: An Anthropology Anthology of Other Worlds external website.

As I tell students in my courses, I am excited to learn with you!"

  • PhD, Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2022
  • MA, Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2017
  • BA, Anthropology and Sociology, Millsaps College, 2012
  • Rocker, Kailey. 2023. “The Stories that Make Us: European Holocaust Narratives and the Promise of Albanian Cosmopolitan Memory Practices.” Kosova Anthropologica, 1(1): 22-41. https://doi.org/10.62303/5kvzt613 external website.
  • Rocker, Kailey. 2022. “An Anthropologist Adrift: A Story on Care, Grief, and Becoming in a Pandemic.” Journal of Anthropology and Humanism, 47(1): 246-251. https://doi.org/10.1111/anhu.12360 external website.
  • Rocker, Kailey and Arba Bekteshi. 2019. “Exploring a Diffuse and Unstructured Participatory Action Research Frame: Mourning as a Tool for Social Interposition in Tirana, Albania.” Irish Journal of Anthropology, 22(1): 224-237.
  • Galaty, Michael; Lorenc Bejko; and Kailey Rocker. 2023. “Systematic, Intensive Landscape Survey Results.” Archaeological Investigations in a Northern Albanian Province: Results of the Projekti Arkeologjik i Shkodrës (PASH), Volume One: Survey and Excavation Results, ed. Michael Galaty and Lorenc Bejko. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology Archaeology Press, p. 89-165. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12201317 external website.
  • Rocker, Kailey and Jonathan Eaton. 2022. “Acting Out the Future of the Albanian National Theatre: New Heritage at the Intersection of Resistance and New Media.” Theorizing Heritage through Non-Violent Resistance, ed. Evren Uzer and Feras Hammami. Palgrave, p. 41-69. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77708-1_3 external website.