Ryan M. Seidemann, J.D., Ph.D, RPA

Ryan M. Seidemann earned a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from Florida State University, focusing on human remains analysis with research at the Smithsonian Institution and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. He completed a Master’s degree in Anthropology at Louisiana State University with a thesis on Maya skeletal remains from Belize. His early work in cultural resource management ranged across the Southeastern United States, with surveys and site excavations on Archaic peoples to inhabitants of New Orleans in the nineteenth century. Ryan later earned both a Bachelor of Civil Law and a Juris Doctorate at LSU and, in 2021, a Ph.D. in Urban Studies/Urban Anthropology from the University of New Orleans, with a dissertation on cemetery preservation inequities in New Orleans.

Throughout his law practice in both Louisiana and Vermont, Ryan has continuously show cased his ability to balance the intersecting worlds of cultural resources management, archaeology, cemeteries, and law. Ryan previously served as an Assistant Attorney General (2005-2024) and Chief of the Lands & Natural Resources Section (2007-2024) of the Louisiana Department of Justice. In that position, he represented the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, the Office of State Lands, Louisiana Cemetery Board, and the Louisiana Division of Archaeology, among other government agencies. He has argued cases in most Louisiana district courts, all Louisiana appellate courts, and multiple times before the Louisiana Supreme Court. Ryan has authored or co-authored more than 100 publications on human remains, cemeteries, and environmental and mineral law. He also served as the chairman of Louisiana's Statewide Cemetery Response Team from 2018-2024.

Ryan specializes in complex interactions of the law and social sciences, with particular focus on disaster response, mortuary archaeology, and historic preservation. Ryan's legal practice spans more than 20 years of research, writing, and advising on matters of water, environmental, property, and natural resources law. He currently serves as the General Counsel at the Water Institute in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In addition, Ryan holds academic appointments at the University of New Orleans where he teaches in both the Planning and Urban Studies and the Anthropology and Sociology departments; Arizona State University, where he teaches in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change; and at Southern University's Law Center. Ryan also serves as the Executive Director of the North American Death Care Regulators Association, the Secretary of the Association for Gravestone Studies, and he is a member of the Government Affairs Committees for the Society for American Archaeology and the Society for Historical Archaeology.