This Summer, Anthropology PhD candidate Kendra Sirak’s research was featured in Emory News. Kendra is a visiting researcher at the Earth Institute at University College Dublin, where she is testing the DNA of people ranging from medieval Nubians to an ancient Chinese specimen to an Irish rebel.

Kendra describes her anthropological training at Emory:

“At Emory, I have learned how to think from a “biocultural” point of view. While many other anthropology programs stress only either a “biological” or a “cultural” approach, Emory combines the two.

I study the biology of past populations and I think about the way their culture and social environment could have influenced individual health and well-being, population demographics, patterns of morbidity and mortality, etc.”