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Professional Biography

            Dr. Shepherd has taught all anthropology courses on the Coon Rapids campus since 2003. As of Fall 2007, these courses will be Cultural Anthropology, Physical Anthropology, Environmental Anthropology, and Principles of Archaeology. Formerly, she also taught General Sociology. Currently (2006-2007), she is a member of ARCC’s Assessment Team working to construct an ongoing and effective system for assessing student achievement in all programs and courses.

            Dr. Shepherd’s doctoral research on Finnish burial practices, prehistoric religion, and the process of Christian conversion during the Viking and early medieval periods was conducted in Finland, mostly at the National Museum Archives and the University of Helsinki, with the support of a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Scholarship. Other research projects have been pursued at the Tromsø Museum, Norway (Norwegian Viking burial practices) and at the American Numismatic Society in New York City (medieval Scandinavian coinage). She has excavated on sites in England, Germany, Sweden, and Idaho. From 1999 to 2002, she has recently been an instructor and principle investigator for Low Birker Excavations and Field School in Cumbria, northern England.

            Her dissertation has been published as a British Archaeological Report, International Series (1999). That and other publications of note may be found on her publications page. In her spare time, Dr. Shepherd manages the web pages for the Society for Anthropology at Community Colleges, a subdivision of the Americal Anthropological Association, of which she is a member. Since 2001, she has been a Postdoctoral Associate of the Center for Medieval Studies at the University of Minnesota.

Pit House at Seasonal Viking Market, excavation at Loddeköpinge, Sweden, 1981.