Assistant Professor, Archaeology

Position Title Assistant Professor, Archaeology About the University

Western Washington University, with over 15,000 students in seven colleges and the graduate school, is nationally recognized for its educational programs, students and faculty. The campus is located in Bellingham, Washington, a coastal community of 90,000 overlooking Bellingham Bay, the San Juan Islands and the North Cascades Mountain range. The city lies 90 miles north of Seattle and 60 miles south of Vancouver, British Columbia.

Western has additional sites in Anacortes, Bremerton, Everett, Port Angeles, and Poulsbo. Western is recognized nationally for its successes, such as being named one of the top public master's-granting institutions in the Pacific Northwest for 25 years in a row by U.S. News & World Report.

Western Washington University is committed to achieving excellence through advancing inclusive success, increasing our Washington impact, and focusing on transformational education grounded in the liberal arts and sciences and based on innovative scholarship, research, and creative activity. Western's greatest strength is the outstanding students, faculty, staff, and alumni/ae who make up its community. Western supports an inclusive governance structure for all and provides a learning and working environment in which everyone can thrive.

In pursuit of this excellence, individual employees are expected to establish and maintain productive and effective inclusive working relationships amongst diverse populations including staff, faculty, administration, student, and external constituents. Further, individual employees are expected to have the ability to operationalize sustainability concepts (economic, societal, environmental) into all aspects of performing their job duties.

About the Department The College of Humanities and Social Science and the Anthropology Department support Western's mission, which states that together with our students, staff, and faculty, we are committed to making a positive impact in the state and the world with a shared focus on academic excellence and inclusive achievement. We encourage applications from women, people of color, people with disabilities, veterans, and other candidates from underrepresented backgrounds and with diverse experiences interested in this opportunity.

About the Position

The Department of Anthropology invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Archaeology, to begin in September 2026. The ideal candidate will have a Ph.D. or ABD at the time of application and will have a strong foundation in the archaeology of western North America, with a preference for Pacific Northwest (including the Salish Sea, Northwest Coast, and/or the Columbia and Fraser Plateau regions).

The methodological specialty within archaeology is open. The Department is committed to maintaining a strong four fields approach to teaching and scholarship.

The ideal candidate is an Archaeologist whose research builds upon the department's existing strengths in collaborative and inclusive archaeology, research that focuses on community engagement with implications for education, heritage management, and repatriation. We are especially interested in candidates with a track record in developing programs in partnership with descendant communities and that implement archaeological methods to address issues that are relevant to those outside the field.

The Department of Anthropology is dedicated to the implementation of archaeology to address issues affecting local communities and populations, incorporating experiential learning, collaborative research, and local/regional partnerships. The successful candidate will contribute to these areas and demonstrate how their active field or laboratory research program in archaeology could involve both undergraduate and graduate students. Teaching responsibilities include Introduction to Archaeology, Archaeological Methods and Theory, Cultural Resource Management, Lab Methods in Archaeology, and courses developed in their own specialty.

The Department of Anthropology is committed to advancing diversity in all areas of faculty…