As an anthropologist at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Dr. Pleasant studies aging, dementia, PTSD, and cannabis use among U.S. military veterans, and the ways in which the VA can enhance veterans’ healthcare and overall well being.
Dr. Traben Pleasant
By Taylor Pedersen, CLA Student Writer - April 9, 2025
Dr. Traben Pleasant’s path to anthropology was somewhat unconventional. Born in Los Angeles and raised in Long Beach, California, Dr. Pleasant, Ph.D. '20, wasn’t an exceptional student in high school and was a bit of a hyper kid. While local gangs and drug dealing was a normal part of his “beautiful neighborhood” in his words, there were also alternatives, and so he spent much of his time playing sports, enjoying the ocean, and, in his own words, “twiddling my thumbs” at times before graduating at 17 years old. College didn’t seem like a viable option immediately after high school, so he enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve for a brief period before transitioning to active duty with the U.S. Marines. In the military, he graduated at the top of his class as the “Company Honor Man” (the best Marine out of 400) during Marine Corps boot camp in 2002. By 2003, Dr. Pleasant was waiting at the border in Kuwait, preparing for an invasion, for what would become three tours in the Iraq War over the next two years.
While military service instilled discipline and resilience in Dr. Pleasant, it also awakened a curiosity that would later define his academic career. After his contract ended in 2006, Dr. Pleasant chose not to re-enlist, opting instead to pursue higher education through the GI Bill. He enrolled at Humboldt State University, in Northern California, where a single anthropology class altered the trajectory of his life.
“I always had an insatiable appetite for culture and travel,” Pleasant recalled. Initially drawn to primatology, his first major field experience took him to Costa Rica. But while studying primates in the wild at a research center (“La Selva”) in the mountains of Costa Rica, he found himself increasingly captivated by the region’s Afro-Caribbean communities he’d come across in the towns. “I started wondering, ‘Who are these people speaking Spanish? How did this happen?’” he said. That intrigue led him away from primatology and toward cultural anthropology.
After earning his bachelor's degree, Dr. Pleasant deepened his research while studying in the UK at University College London (one of the best schools in the world at the time), where he focused on Afro-Latin populations in Central America, particularly in Bocas Del Toro, Panama. One of his mentors, recognizing his interest in Caribbean cultures and warm coastal environments (and surfing), encouraged him to conduct research there. What began as a month-long research trip evolved into a long-term academic focus that still exists today.
When Dr. Pleasant later pursued a Ph.D. in anthropology at Oregon State University, his work in Panama became the foundation for his dissertation. He secured a prestigious Fulbright Fellowship to return to Bocas del Toro and study the impact of the country’s national digitization initiative. Panama was installing “InfoPlazas” (computer centers) across the country and in rural villages, aiming to bridge the digital divide and improve educational opportunities for its citizens. Dr. Pleasant's research explored whether these efforts led to meaningful upward mobility and the potential to enhance education, particularly for Afro-Caribbean and Indigenous communities in the islands. At the time, “the impacts of the Infoplazas were just beginning,” he admitted, “but the potential was there.” However, the NGO that Dr. Pleasant worked with, called “Give & Surf,” was, and still are, making amazing, longstanding impacts in the local Afro-Caribbean and Indigenous communities of Bocas del Toro while partnering with the Infoplaza initiative and using their facility. Today, many of those initial potentials are being realized and the lives of many locals, youths and adults, have been changed for the better thanks to Give & Surf and the Infoplazas.
Now, Dr. Pleasant has brought his anthropological expertise to an entirely new arena: veterans’ healthcare. As a qualitative researcher at the VA office in Portland, he applies qualitative research methods to study aging, dementia, PTSD, and cannabis usage among veterans. “I wasn’t initially thinking of aging when I came in,” he explained. “But I found that neurology, aging, and dementia research were open spaces that were welcoming to qualitative and cultural research. The VA has a surprising number of anthropologists today.”
While Dr. Pleasant’s primary research is on aging, dementia, and rural veterans’ healthcare, one of his current projects examines how veterans use cannabis as a therapeutic, which is a particularly relevant topic in Oregon, where cannabis is legal and dispensaries are widespread. “Veterans use cannabis—it’s just known,” Pleasant said. “But the federal government hasn’t legalized it, and there’s little guidance on exactly how VA clinicians should discuss its potential harms or benefits to their patients, the veterans.” His research aims to highlight and inform evolving policies on cannabis, and the prevalence of use among veterans within the VA Healthcare System.
Dr. Pleasant’s successful journey—from a Los Angeles born kid and rambunctious high school youth in Long Beach, California, to a decorated Marine Corps Iraq War Veteran, to an anthropologist studying digital access in Panama, and now to a researcher at the VA—has been defined by relentless curiosity and adaptability, often when the odds were not in his favor. Whether studying Afro-Caribbean communities or the healthcare needs of aging veterans, his work underscores the power of anthropology to shed light on human experiences, and life experiences just as complex and interesting as his own.