News

Carel van Schaik (Director, Anthropological Institute, University of Zürich) gave a lecture today on cognition in orangutans. He focused on how curiosity (or rather, a fascinating apparent deficit in curiosity in orangutans), social experience when young, and ecological conditions help to explain...

CHES Graduate Affiliate Rebecca Brittain just received a grant from the American Institute for Indonesian Studies (AIFIS) Henry Luce Foundation. These funds will help to support the dissertation research that Becca is currently doing in Indonesia, "The Role of the Gut Microbiome in Digestion and...

A highly successful Third Lembersky Conference ended today. Organized by Erin Vogel (CHES Faculty Member) and Jessica Rothman (Hunter College), the program in primate nutritional ecology, energetics, and health included presentations by 22 scholars including CHES members Gloria Dominguez-Bello,...

The Third Lembersky Conference in Human Evolutionary Studies began today. Shown here is CHES Faculty member Dr. Erin Vogel, a co-organzer of the conference, Advances in Primate Nutritional Ecology, Health, and Energetics. The conference brings together a group of international researchers,...

Tim Bransford successfully defended his dissertation less than two months ago, and has now begun working with Dr. Mitch Irwin as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Northern Illinois University. For his dissertation, Tim investigated the energetics and nutrition of wild...

CHES PhD student Fred Foster just published with coauthor P.J. Constantino a paper testing the hypothesis that wear resistance of tooth enamel changes as a tooth is worn down. Fred and his collaborator applied the microscratch test to the surface of three transverse sections cut through molars from...

CHES Alum Sarah Hlubik has just begun a postdoc at the Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology at George Washington University. Sarah obtained her PhD in Anthropology in 2018 for her dissertation "Finding Prometheus: Evidence for fire in the Early Pleistocene at FxJj20 AB, Koobi Fora,...

CHES Graduate Affiliate Tim Bransford (center in photo) passed his doctoral dissertation this afternoon. Tim's dissertation, "The Energetic and Nutritional Costs of Motherhood in Wild Bornean Orangutans" is based on his research in Borneo for almost two years as well as a database of long-term...

CHES Graduate Affiliate Melanie Fenton was just awarded a Fulbright US Student Award to Kenya. Congratulations Melanie!

CHES Graduate Affiliate Melanie Fenton was just awarded a research grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research to support her work ""Coercive and affiliative mating tactics in olive baboons (Papio anubis)" at her major advisor's site in Kenya. As a recipient of the CHES...

CHES PhD Alumnus Jay Reti (2013) was just named as the new Director of the Santa Cruz Island Reserve of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Santa Cruz Island is the largest island off the coast of California (about four times larger than Manhattan Island) with many endemic species of...

Two CHES Undergraduate Affiliates recently won awards for their Senior Honors Thesis research. The Department of Anthropology held its annual symposium showcasing undergraduate research for Senior Honors Theses today. Several of the students were CHES Undergraduate Affiliates. One of them, Sara...

The final talk in the CHES Lecture Series for this academic year was today by archaeologist Yotam Asscher of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Dr. Asscher discussed the challenges of rescue excavations in Israel. He described in fascinating detail how mobile laboratories and portable instruments...

Anthropologist Brian Wood (University of California, Los Angeles) spoke today on sex differences in space use and spatial cognition among the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania. Dr. Wood has been studying the Hadza for well over a decade, during which he has amassed a large array of data, some of...

Last night's "Featured Research" Evening highlighted the research CHES Graduate Affiliate Fred Foster is doing on the microstructure and mechanical behavior of primate tooth enamel. Fred is applying methods from material science engineering to look inside the teeth of extant primates and link fine details of...

At last week's annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Cleveland, Ohio, CHES Graduate Affiliate Will Aguado was awarded the Sherwood Washburn Prize for best podium presentation by a student. His lecture was entitled "Effective seed dispersal of an economically important...

CHES Graduate Affiliate Melanie Fenton was just awarded a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation to support his research "Contextual and physiological correlates of complex behavioral strategies in primates." Melanie's research investigates aspects of the...

CHES Graduate Affiliate Fred Foster was recently awarded a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation to support his research "Microstructure and mechanical properties of primate dental enamel." Fred is using methods from material science engineering to study the...

Dr. Ashley Hammond, who recently was appointed Curator of Biological Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, gave a lecture today on the evolution of bipedalism and hip anatomy in humans past and present. Dr. Hammond's research takes her to a number of fossil sites in East Africa, where...

Erin Vogel recently received the Robert W. Sussman Award for Scientific Contributions to Anthropology. Congratulations to Erin!