I am a bio-cultural anthropologist whose current work focuses on community resilience and culture change in rural communities in the U.S. I have experience in designing laboratory experiments as well as collecting ethnographic field data, and I use both quantitative and qualitative methods.
For my doctoral work at Rutgers University, I worked on understanding why humans alone appear to have complex culture (specifically, why they are able to create iterative improvements to technologies across generations). My dissertation tested the hypothesis that the capacity for precise imitation is the key prerequisite. The data that I collected from a large-scale experimental study show that imitation does appear to be central to cultural complexity (see wasielewski_2014.pdf for details).
While employed as a postdoc in the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University, I spent a summer collecting ethnographic data on social support in the mountains of southeast Kentucky. See Sharing in Kentucky for more. This experience was the inspiration my decision to return to school: I am in the process of earning a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Arizona (expected spring 2020).
For my doctoral work at Rutgers University, I worked on understanding why humans alone appear to have complex culture (specifically, why they are able to create iterative improvements to technologies across generations). My dissertation tested the hypothesis that the capacity for precise imitation is the key prerequisite. The data that I collected from a large-scale experimental study show that imitation does appear to be central to cultural complexity (see wasielewski_2014.pdf for details).
While employed as a postdoc in the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University, I spent a summer collecting ethnographic data on social support in the mountains of southeast Kentucky. See Sharing in Kentucky for more. This experience was the inspiration my decision to return to school: I am in the process of earning a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Arizona (expected spring 2020).
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What's New?October 2018:
I'm pleased to announce that a collaboration with Robert Lynch and Lee Cronk has borne fruit: our paper "Sexual conflict and the Trivers-Willard hypothesis: Females prefer daughters and males prefer sons" has been accepted for publication in Scientific Reports! June 2018: I am working on two manuscripts from the work that I did last summer in southeast Kentucky! The first focuses on understanding informal social support in the context of economic change, while the second deals with subsistence (growing, finding, and hunting food!). March 2018: I'm looking forward to visiting southeast Kentucky from March 21-April 4! On March 31 at 3pm I'll be talking about the summer research, "Sharing in Kentucky" at the Knott County Sportsplex, in the conference room. This event is open to the public. I'll also be presenting at the Appalachian Studies Association conference in Cincinnati, April 5-8. Please click the Sharing in Kentucky Study tab for a synopsis of those results.  Photo courtesy of Misty Hamilton
September 2017:
I'm wrapping up an amazing field season in Eastern Kentucky in just a few weeks. I'm sad to say goodbye to the wonderful people and new friends I've made here, but am looking forward to sharing some of what I've learned about this special place with friends and colleagues. July 2017:
I'm looking forward to spending the summer in southeast Kentucky, where I'll be talking to local people about sharing and helping as part of the Human Generosity Project -- humangenerosity.org |