A Pennsylvania native, Martin completed undergraduate studies in anthropology, cognitive psychology, and English at the University of Pittsburgh. He graduated headlong into the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, which provided him ample opportunity to think deep thoughts about the influence of things like labor, debt, love, and friendship on the social constitution of relations and subjectivity. He eventually matriculated to the University of Chicago to pursue graduate studies in anthropology and archaeology. Martin subsequently spent many years wandering the earth, seeking a greater understanding of humanity. Since 2010, Martin has lived or otherwise spent long periods in France, Spain, Australia, Turkey, and Argentina, and has traveled a whole bunch of other places in between. He moved to Colorado with his family in 2022 and was quickly drawn to Regis University by its commitment to accompany students in building a hope-filled future. He dreams of tending his garden and cooking for the people he loves.
Martin's areas of academic interest include such things as material culture studies, sociocultural constructions of value (including consumption and political economy), the sociology of knowledge, and the complex relationships between power, institutions, and education. Learning about these subjects while traveling the world has helped Martin develop a keen understanding of global higher education, making him an excellent guide to the intricacies of university life, as well as the many opportunities available to students.
Martin does research on Iron Age archaeology of the northwestern Mediterranean, as well as the history and sociology of European archaeology, in both cases with a specific focus on France. More specifically, Martin examines archaeology's professionalization and rationalization in France from the Second World War through the early 21st Century, focusing on how these processes relate to broader social and economic developments, as well as the concomitant assertion of State control in determining relationships between old and new. He is particularly interested in understanding the effects of State control on the interpretation and representation of archaeological data from the French Iron Age, or "protohistory," a period that has long been of central importance in the fashioning of French national identity discourses. None of this is really useful, but it's definitely been a great context in which to think deep thoughts about how societies function.
