Zada Komara, Ph.D.

Senior Lecturer

About Me

Zada Komara is an award-winning Senior Lecturer in the Lewis Honors College. She is also an affiliate faculty member in the Appalachian Studies Program and in the Department of Anthropology. Her accolades include the Travis Stimeling Early Career Award for Excellence in Teaching Appalachian Studies, the 2025 Outstanding Teaching Award, and the 2024 Great Teacher award from the University of Kentucky Alumni Association. She has a B.A. in Anthropology from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Kentucky. Her focus is archaeology of the recent past in Central and Southern Appalachian, oral history, public history, and general material culture studies. Komara was also appointed by Gov. Andy Beshear to the Kentucky Oral History Commission as a result of her oral history expertise. Her work focuses on early 20th-century company coal towns and explores the entanglement of material culture (the everyday goods that populate our lives) with persistent stereotypes and narratives about the Appalachian region.  She also administers the UK Appalachian Center's Coal Camp Documentary Project, a collaborative documentation effort focusing on company coal towns in Kentucky's 54 Appalachian counties. She owns three original series Star Trek uniforms and wears them regularly, and enjoys developing cheesecake recipes.

Ask Me About... 

• Appalachian Programming and the Lewis Appalachian Club
• The entanglement of material culture in persistent, negative stereotypical representations of Appalachia
• Feminist science fiction
• Pseudoscience and its connection to social inequality