Biological Anthropology

My research seeks to explain how human beings come to physically embody the biological and social aspects of our environments. In varying sites across Europe, my work encapsulates the challenges of bioarchaeological analysis as the most direct indicator of human behavior. I examine diet change from the time of Greek colonization to the Medieval period, and I also helped geochemically assess archaeological human remains to test early written history. With a research team in Ethiopia, we studied wild Ethiopian geladas to generate the largest wild nonhuman primate gut microbiome data set to date. My research uniquely and advantageously incorporates human skeletal populations as well as extant non-human primates to clarify synergistic relationships between environmental impacts at multiple scales. 

I study how the environment, biology, and culture shape human health and disease. My recent research in Panama focuses on Zoonotic diseases and deforestation, while in Bolivia, I study nutrition, health, and life history. I am interested in how individual and household conditions may shape disease patterns, and also how they shape childhood growth, diet, and nutrition. My research also aims to identify key practices in field-based stress biomarker collections that have emerged from decades of biocultural research, including available options, agreed-on conventions, and ethical considerations.