Background
As a first-year undergraduate I took an Intro to Biological Anthropology course, and I enjoyed it so much that I switched my major. As I took classes across all four subfields, I became driven to understand why humans ultimately do what they do. I found that an evolutionary perspective on behavior produced meaningful answers to my questions, so I pursued a PhD in Integrative Anthropological Sciences from UC Santa Barbara. While there, I (with much help from locals) started a research site in Nepal where I still continue to work. After my PhD, I was a postdoc in the Computational Mate Choice Lab in the Psychology Department at UCSB. My cross-field training has led me to draw on diverse methods and perspectives, and I aim for my work to cross disciplinary barriers.
Education
- PhD, Anthropology, University of California Santa Barbara, 2023
- MA, Anthropology, University of California Santa Barbara, 2019
- BA, Anthropology, University of Northern Iowa, 2015
Courses
- ANTH 215: Introduction to Biological Anthropology
- ANTH 220: Quantitative Reasoning for Anthropologists
- ANTH 315: Sex and Gender
- ANTH 360: Primate Behavioral Ecology
- ANTH 375: Race and Human Behavior
- ANTH 604: Biological Anthropology Core
Specializations
Arranged Marriage, Mate Choice, Parenting, Advice, Human Behavioral Ecology
Research
I use an evolutionary perspective to understand mate choice, marriage, family formation, and parenting. My research examines how people and their parents choose partners in arranged marriages, and how parental influence on partner choice shapes reproduction, health, and wellbeing. I am also interested in how parents make decisions about how to raise their children, especially when they receive conflicting advice from different sources. I maintain an active research site in Dhading, Nepal, and I am beginning comparative research projects among various groups in the United States. I use a range of methods from across disciplines, including cross-cultural and cross-species comparison, focus groups, structured surveys, machine learning, and field experiments.