Teaching

I am a Biological Anthropologist and I teach Human Ecology to Human Sciences undergraduates. Human Sciences is an inter-disciplinary degree course that provides students with the tools to explore and study people in a variety of different ways. Human Ecology allows students to understand the mechanisms in which human individuals and populations have been both physically and culturally shaped by their environment. Importantly, Human Ecology provides a lynchpin with the other disciplines within Human Sciences to provide a deeper understanding of what it is to be human.

About me

I came up to St Catherine’s to read Human Sciences in 1985.  I continued to study Biological Anthropology at Oxford and have taught students studying Human Sciences since the early 1990s.  I have at the same time, with my husband, brought up our family of one daughter and two sons.

Research

My interests include predictive adaptive strategies for those living in nutritionally-challenged environments; agricultural risk minimisation strategies in contemporary and historical communities; the genetic adaptations that have manifest themselves through chance and selection to benefit individuals under particular circumstances and the serious implications of human group choice on animal populations.