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I am a biocultural anthropologist who pulls from life history theory and cross-cultural perspectives to better understand how structural inequality and lived experiences can impact psychology and physiology. Specifically, I am interested in the way early-life environments, resource availability, and inflammation affect energetic trade-offs and health outcomes. My early work draws from international data collected online, where I assessed objective and perceived disease risk and its impact on psychology and behavior. I also maintain a line of research that assesses the relationship between attachment style and stress response behaviors.
Most recently, I established a field site alongside collaborators in Utila, Honduras, which is a small island in the Caribbean Sea. This project is known as the Utila Child Health Project, of which she is the Co-Director. There, I work with local families from Utila and mainland Honduras to examine how kids grow and develop based on experienced stress, resource availability and limitations, and physiological immune activation. Ultimately, I am interested in how limited energy can alter our behavior and the way we interact with our environment, and how these patterns manifest in as health disparities. Specifically, I have investigated how children develop pathogen disgust sensitivity (PDS) throughout childhood, how boys and girls may differ in their levels of PDS, and how food availability and increased rates of inflammation may alter with PDS levels. I am also interested in how these relationships may differ based on experiences of stress, discrimination, and immigration. With the Utila Child Health Project, we focus heavily on partipatory research design, and prioritize capacity building, community engagement, and outreach through public presentations, working with local doctors to provide crucial health information to families, and providing children’s programs free of cost.
Currently at the University of Notre Dame, my research continues to unpack the impact of childhood environment and early-life adversity on health and behavioral outcomes. Working with Dr. Lee Gettler on a project based in the northern Republic of Congo, I am assessing patterns of childhood physiological and nutritional stress based on environment instability, harshness, and market integration. I plan to work with cross-cultural observational data, as well as conduct laboratory analyses to assess biomarkers, such as cortisol, continuing to examine the intersections of behavior, psychology, and physiology across cultural groups and ages.