I received my Bachelor's degree in Anthropology in 2008 from the University of Arizona. Following my bachelor's degree, I worked in cultural resource management archaeology for a few years before arriving at the University of New Mexico. I received my MS in Evolutionary Anthropology in 2016 and my PhD in Archaeology in 2019. Following graduation, I was visiting faculty in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Mississippi (2019-2022). I am an Assistant Professor in the College of Population Health at the University of New Mexico. I run the Virtual Early Life Stress-Pediatrics (VELS-Pediatrics) research group alongside Dr. Ethan C. Hill.

 

The overarching goal of my research is to investigate the intersections between human biology and culture, with specific attention to population-level health outcomes in vulnerable groups. I seek to understand how inequality, marginalization, and movement impact the lived experience, how they are embodied, and how they are visible in the dead. Much of my current work focuses on pediatric health outcomes. I am also interested in heterogeneity in individual frailty and risks, as well as how the nature of skeletal assemblages (the Osteological Paradox) impacts our interpretations of health and stress in the dead.

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Areas of specialty: osteology, paleopathology, pediatric health, dental anthropology, postmortem computed tomography, social determinants of health, early-life stress, developmental origins of health and disease, New Mexico.