Category: Biological Anthropology

Congratulations to our 2024 Anthropology Honors Students!

Read more about this year’s honors students and their projects on our 2024 Honors Students page.

(left to right: Dr. Robert Paul, Sarah Vickery-Hartanto*, Kevin Gunawardana*, Elizabeth Whiteside, Isabel Staton, Ezra Packard, Emily Silver, Sona Davis, Eric Li) *Sarah and Kevin are on track to graduate with honors in December 2024.

Sona Davis
Thesis Title: Investigating the role of the BAF Complex in Human Disease and Evolution
Advisor: David Gorkin, John Lindo

Maddie Hasson
Thesis Title: Guiding Cell Perception of its Microenvironment for Enhanced Microfracture Repair
Advisor: Jay Patel, Craig Hadley

Raya Islam
Thesis Title: Mapping Bengali New York
Advisor: Yami Rodriguez

Emily Jang
Thesis Title: Exploring Beliefs & Identity: The Internal & External World of Asian Americans
Advisor: Chikako Ozawa-de Silva, Brendan Ozawa-de Silva

Qucheng (Eric) Li
Thesis Title: Sinicizing Muslims: Haunting, Punitiveness, and Sacrifice in Neoliberalizing China
Advisor: Michael Peletz

Ezra Packard
Thesis Title: The Stories Behind Atlanta Food Growing: Oral History and Exhibition as Research Method
Advisor: Kristin Phillips, Jonathan Coulis

Emily Silver
Thesis Title: Community Organizing in Atlanta: Perspectives from the AIDS Crisis and COVID-19 Pandemic
Advisor: Rachel Hall-Clifford

Andrea Snoddy
Thesis Title: Myths and Medicine: Analyzing Medical Racism in the Atlanta Metropolitan Area
Advisor: John Lindo

Isabel Staton
Thesis Title: Farmers in the Storm: Exploring Alternative Risk Management Strategies Amid Winter Storm Elliott
Advisor: Hilary King

Phoebe Taiwo
Thesis Title: Examining the Relationship Between Physical and Mental Comorbidities and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Serostatus in Black Women
Advisor: Anna Rubstova

Elizabeth Whiteside
Thesis Title: Uncovering Menopause in Tufted Capuchin Monkeys (Sapajus apella): Analyzing the Relationship between Estradiol, Aging, and Behavioral Estrus in a Captive Population
Advisor: Marcela Benitez

Congratulations to our 2024 Anthropology student award winners!

2024 Anthropology Student Awards

The Anthropology Department is pleased to announce our 2024 student award winners! Undergraduate awards were presented at our annual Honors and Awards Ceremony on Friday, April 26th. For award descriptions and past winners, visit our Departmental Awards webpage.  We are so proud of our many impressive students.  Please join us in congratulating them!

Outstanding Senior Award: 

  • Eric Li
  • Ezra Packard
  • Elizabeth Whiteside

Outstanding Junior Award: 

  • Krishna Sanaka

Marjorie Shostak Award for Excellence and Humanity in Ethnography:

  • AJ Jones  for her dissertation “Performing the Missing X: Sex, Gender, Disability, and Ambivalent Identity Politics in the United States”, advised by Chikako Ozawa-de Silva and nominated by Bruce Knauft.
  • Sasha Tycko for her photographic installation “Ways of the Atlanta Forest”, advised by Anna Grimshaw.
  • Galya Fischer for her Capstone project “Side by Side: An Exploration of Accessibility and Anthropological Research”, advised by Anna Grimshaw.

Trevor E. Stokol Scholarship for Undergraduate Research 2024-25:

  • Peter Attarian
  • Kaela Goldstein
  • Kevin Gunawardana
  • Sarah Jung
  • Lydia King

George Armelagos Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student:

  • Katy Lindquist
  • Sophie Joseph

Postdoctoral Graduate Scott Schnur published in Nature Energy for co-authored article, A Framework to Centre Justice in Energy Transition Innovations.

Postdoctoral Graduate, Scott Schnur collaborated with researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and other universities published an article in Nature Energy titled A Framework to Centre Justice in Energy. In the article, Scott and his colleagues discuss the important role of community engagement as a tool to promote equity in the green Energy Transition. They propose a framework that developers, planners, government officials, and other stakeholders can use in order to promote energy justice and inclusivity in the critical work that lies ahead in transforming our grid and combating climate change. Scott says, “The article continues my interest in exploring ways to promote equity and justice in relation to emergent climate futures.”

Check out the write up from NREL here!

Anthropology Honors Students 2023

Congratulations to our 2023 Anthropology honors students! We wish you all the absolute best in your future endeavors!

You can read more about this year’s honors students and their projects on our 2023 Honor Students page.

Hunter Akridge
Thesis Title: Contesting the Cultural Politics of Care: How Equitable Digital Care Platforms Reimagine the Future of Work

Rachel Broun
Thesis Title: Enacting Solidarity and Negotiating Fictive Kinship: The Legal Consciousness of Black Women Working in the Criminal Legal System

Pamela Chopra Beniwal
Thesis Title: The Effect of Commercialization, Militarization, and Stigmatization of the Breast Cancer Awareness Movement on Breast Cancer Patients

Lucia Buscemi
Thesis Title: Footprints of the Roof of the World: Navigating the Impacts of Anthropogenic Activities in the Everest Region

Naomi Gonzalez-Garcia
Thesis Title: Constellations of Un-Matter(ing) & Matter(ing) through Atlanta’s Black Spaces: Anthropological Perspectives on Housing and Relationality

Ruth Korder
Thesis Title: Detecting Human Adaptations in Populations of the Andean Highlands

Danielle Mangabat
Thesis Title: Confronting Colonial Legacies: Imagining a Decolonial Future in the Philippines through Reproductive Health

Natalie McGrath
Thesis Title: Recentering the Voices of Pregnant-People and Birth Workers; Narratives of Childbirth

Atlas Moss
Thesis Title: Vocal Recognition and Social Knowledge in captive Tufted Capuchin Monkeys (Sapajus apella)

Alvaro Perez Daisson
Thesis Title: Race-related Health Disparities in the Context of COVID-19

Tanvi Shah
Thesis Title: (Re)constructing Postpartum Depression (PPD) via Cross-Specialty Analysis and an Anthropological Lens of Subjectivity 

Krithika Shrinivas
Thesis Title: Stone Tools and Sociality: Potential Effects of Conversation and Hobbies on Lithic Quality

Lizzy Wagman
Thesis Title: Genome-wide patterns of selection in pre- and post-European contact Caribbean populations

Amy Wang
Thesis Title: The Impacts of Social Media on Young Adults’ Body Images in the United States

Sam Weinstein
Thesis Title: Vocal Clues to Diabetes Mellitus: Exploring the Ethics and Tech of AI in Clinical Practice

Gracie Wilson
Thesis Title: The Culture of College Mental Health: Narratives of Stress, Value, and Belonging 

Christopher Zeuthen
Thesis Title: Qualitative Examination of Veteran Perspectives on Moral Injury

Anthropology Student Awards 2023

2023 Undergraduate Student Awards

The Anthropology Department is pleased to announce our 2023 student award winners! For award descriptions and past winners, visit our Departmental Awards webpage. We are so proud of our many impressive students!

Outstanding Senior Award: Hunter Akridge, Rachel Broun

Outstanding Junior Award: Elizabeth Whiteside

Marjorie Shostak Award for Excellence and Humanity in Ethnography:

  • Pamela Beniwal  for her honors thesis “The Effect of Commercialization, Militarization, and Stigmatization of the Breast Cancer Awareness Movement on Breast Cancer Patients”, advised by Mel Konner.
  • Audrey Lu for her ANT 372W class project “The Lives of Charting: An Emergency Room Scribe’s Perspective (ANT 372W project)”, advised by Anna Grimshaw.
  • Alvaro Perez Daisson for his honors thesis “Race-related Health Disparities in Cuba in the Context of COVID-19”, advised by Mel Konner and Kristin Phillips.
  • Christopher Zeuthen for his honors thesis “Veteran Perspectives on Moral Injury”, advised by Mel Konner.

Photo from left to right: Professor Robert Paul, Christopher Zeuthen, Professor Melvin Konner, Audrey Lu, Alvaro Perez Daisson, and Pamela Beniwal.

Trevor E. Stokol Scholarship for Undergraduate Research:

  • 1st Place: Eric Li
  • Maddie Hasson
  • Raya Islam (not pictured)

2023 Graduate Student Awards

The George Armelagos Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student: AJ Jones, Caroline Owens

Delores P. Aldridge Award: Adrian Cato

Anthropology major Maddie Hasson, along with three Emory juniors win elite Goldwater Scholarships.

Four extraordinary Emory College juniors — Jojo Liu, Yingrong “Momo” Chen, Maddie Hasson, and Tamecka Marcheau-Miller — have won the Goldwater Scholarship, the nation’s top scholarship for undergraduates studying math, natural sciences and engineering. This year’s winners, who have made major contributions in labs and authored or co-authored papers on their research, all plan to pursue doctoral degrees in their respective fields. They join 45 previous Emory recipients of the award, which was endowed by Congress in 1986 to honor the late Sen. Barry Goldwater.

Maddie Hasson is an Anthropology major and rising senior honors student who also won the Trevor E. Stokol scholarship for her undergraduate research.

Congratulations Maddie and to everyone on outstanding academic achievements!

Read the full article and winners’ biographies here!

Graduate Sophie Joseph and Professor John Lindo reveal results of genomic study of ancient Andeans.

The Lindo lab specializes in mapping little-explored human lineages of the Americas. 

Previously published research found evidence of the tuberculosis bacterium in the skeletal material of 1,400-year-old Andean mummies, contradicting some theories that TB did not exist in South America until the arrival of Europeans 500 years ago. 

The current paper provides the first evidence for a human immune-system response to TB in ancient Andeans and gives clues to when and how their genomes may have adapted to that exposure.

Among the strongest signals detected were for biomarkers that are switched on in modern humans during an active TB infection. The researchers modeled the timing of selection for several of the genes involved in the TB-response pathways. Although they were not as strong as for exposure to TB, some signals were also detected for biomarkers related to adaptation to hypoxia, or low levels of oxygen in the blood that result from living at high altitude.

“Human-pathogen co-evolution is an understudied area that has a huge bearing on modern-day public health,” Sophie Joseph says. “Understanding how pathogens and humans have been linked and affecting each other over time may give insights into novel treatments for any number of infectious diseases.”

Read the full article here.

Chikako and Brendan Ozawa-de Silva’s piece “A Vaccine for the Loneliness Epidemic” was featured in the Special Issue of Diplomatic Courier for the World Economic Forum

In 2018, then UK Prime Minister Theresa May said, “Loneliness is one of the greatest public health challenges of our time,” and appointed the country’s first minister for loneliness. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called loneliness a “growing health epidemic,” stating that social isolation is “associated with a reduction in lifespan similar to that caused by smoking 15 cigarettes a day.”

What do the following have in common? Rising rates of social anxiety and social withdrawal, alarming rates of suicide (up 51% among teenage girls in the U.S. in just a two-year period from 2019-2021, and up over 300% over a ten-year period), the increasing number of mass shootings, the epidemic of burnout in healthcare and other sectors, eating disorders. All too often, at the heart of each of these is a lack of social connection and the feeling of being loved, accepted, and understood. This is loneliness. Education is the most powerful tool we have for bringing about this change. Recent research in psychology and neuroscience shows that young children and even infants have a natural orientation towards kindness and helping over cruelty.

Read the full article here!

Check out Chikako’s interview about her book, The Anatomy of Loneliness.

Yulia Chuvileva, PhD Alumna in Anthropology, and co-authors present their report on Selling Industrial Gallina Criolla Products in Guatemala.

“Selling Industrial ‘Gallina Criolla’ Products in Guatemala” details these new
corporate marketing tactics of competing with gallina criolla economies of
indgenous and peasant peoples. The report begins by summarizing the latest
science on the economic, ecological, social, nutritional, and taste differences
between gallina criolla and industrial chicken. It shows that the gallinas criollas
that emerge from campesina systems of production are different animals than
the industrial chickens that emerge from industrial systems of production. The
methods of rearing involved, the ecological and economic functions the birds
perform, and the nutritional value and taste of the chicken meat from the two
systems are not the same. At the same time, while gallina criolla production
is one part of agroecological systems that tend towards diversity, industrial
production of commercial chickens tends towards homogeneity.

Read the full report here.