Biography
Dr. Matejowsky is a professor who specializes in cultural anthropology and food studies. He received his Ph.D. in 2001 from Texas A&M University and joined the UCF faculty in 2002. His research interests include fast food, economic anthropology, globalization, urbanization, popular culture, disaster studies. Dr. Matejowsky currently conducts his research in the Philippines and U.S. His books include 2022’s Smothered and Covered: Waffle House and the Southern Imaginary (University of Alabama Press) and 2017’s Fast Food Globalization in the Provincial Philippines (Lexington Books). He is the 2014 recipient of the Association for the Study of Food and Society’s Belasco Prize for Scholarly Excellence for his journal article in Food, Culture & Society “The Incredible, Edible Balut: Ethnographic Perspectives on the Philippines’ Favorite Liminal Food.”
Research Specialization
Cultural anthropology, economic anthropology, globalization, fast food, disasters, culture change and development; Southeast Asia (Philippines).
Highlights
Please visit the News section for Dr. Matejowsky to find the latest information on his accomplishments.
2013:
Congratulations to Dr. Ty Matejowsky for receiving the Teaching Incentive Program Award.
May 2013:
Dr. Ty Matejowsky and Dr. Beatriz Reyes-Foster wrote a guest column piece for the Orlando Sentinel called, “Anthropologists should do a better job of promoting their field.” http://news.cos.ucf.edu/ucf-professors-write-guest-column-piece-for-the-orlando-sentinel/
July 2012:
Dr. Ty Matejowsky is quoted in the Wall Street Journal article “Migration and Remittances during the Global Financial Crisis and Beyond.” http://news.cos.ucf.edu/migrant-workers-more-reliable-than-foreign-investors-in-tough-times/
November 2011:
Merchant Coping Strategies in the Post-Disaster Context: Anthropological Perspectives from Dagupan City, Philippines
The main Philippine island of Luzon endured the destructive impact of two Category Three typhoons that hit the region within days of each other in late September 2011. Typhoons Nesat and Nalgae battered towns and cities across Luzon with successive waves of high winds, storm surges, torrential rains, and catastrophic flooding. This proposed field project seeks to elucidate how small retailers in the urban Philippines remain resilient and commercially viable under conditions of chronic natural hazard by focusing ethnographic attention on downtown merchants in Dagupan City, Pangasinan. Insights about the risk aversion/management strategies and coping mechanisms employed by Dagupeño traders in the immediate wake of Typhoons Nesat and Nalgae would not only add ethnographic depth to current understanding about how social networks are locally cultivated and engaged within post-disaster recoveries, they would also provide a cross-cultural counterpoint to those developing societies less frequently impacted by natural disasters. Taken as a whole, this proposed research project stands to contribute to the social scientific literature on natural hazards by (1) elucidating how local retailers negotiate a major disaster’s immediate and secondary effects within a developing urban context; (2) illuminating the specific mechanisms by which small businesses engage the Philippines’ more pervasive and highly resilient “culture of disaster” vis-à-vis conditions of chronic natural hazard; and (3) exploring the interplay between local business networks and their interactions with outside resources.
June 2010:
Congratulations to the faculty who have been promoted!
Dr. Ty Matejowsky, Anthropology – Tenure and Promotion to Associate Professor
May 2010:
Congratulations to Ty Matejowsky on being promoted to the rank of Associate Professor effective Fall 2010!
December 2009:
