Research Activities

Alicia Hawkins and PhD student Sarah Hazell are working with Sagamok Anishnawbek to learn more about thousands of ancient objects discovered along the shore of Lake Huron. The project is featured in the Fall 2024 edition of U of T Magazine. (Posted October 22, 2024)

Zoë Wool investigates the toxic, lingering and far-reaching effects of armed conflict. Professor Wool’s research challenges conventional ideas about war, with a focus on the toxicity of war in the post-9/11 era. Learn more in the Fall 2024 edition of U of T Magazine. (Posted October 22, 2024)

Adjunct Professor Dr. Laura Bolt has co-authored a study entitled "Mantled howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata) alter activity and spatial cohesion across a continuous forest and forest fragment in Costa Rica" in the journal Primates. This article compares howler monkey activity budgets and proximity to other monkeys across a small rainforest fragment and a large continuous rainforest in Costa Rica in order to determine how human-caused forest fragmentation impacts primate behavioural ecology.  Bolt and colleagues found that monkeys spent more time feeding and less time in close proximity to other monkeys when in the fragmented forest, likely due to the poorer-quality vegetation in the forest fragment. (Posted October 3, 2024)

Congratulations to Professor Nicole Novroski who has been awarded the UTM Annual Research Prize in the Sciences for her contributions to the advancement of forensic DNA typing and analysis using novel biological and instrumentation approaches. (Posted September 23, 2024)

Dr. Lauren Schroeder moderated an online panel discussion "Lucy and the Taung Child: A Century of Science" presented by the Leakey Foundation in partnership with the Institute of Human Origins (IHO) and the Palaeontological Scientific Trust (PAST). The panel brought experts from Ethiopia, South Africa, and North America together in order to examine a hundred years of challenges and progress in paleoanthropology. (Posted September 17, 2024)

With Mississauga First Nation collaborators, and others, Alicia Hawkins is a recipient of a SSHRC Insight Grant for a project entitled Ancestral Teachings: Archaeology and Historical Land Use on the Mississaugi Delta and Beyond. (Posted September 17, 2024)

Alicia Hawkins and Heather Walder published results of a study examining glass trade beads from the Great Lakes and European production centres in Antiquity. (Posted September 17, 2024)

Medical anthropologist Dr. Madeleine Mant and historian Dr. Martin Revermann (Historical Studies) will examine the ways that the sciences and theatre as performance interact, via the The Theatre of Science 2024-25 UTM-JHI Seminar. (Posted May 24, 2024)

Dr. Nicole Novroski has an article entitled "Police Are Using Your Publicly Available DNA to Solve Crimes. That’s a Good Thing." in U of T Magazine (Posted May 13, 2024)

Adjunct Professor Dr. Laura Bolt was lead author on a study titled "Conservation education initiatives for elementary school students at La Suerte Biological Research Station, Costa Rica" published in Folia Primatologica. This study details the formation of a conservation education outreach program for elementary school students at La Suerte Biological Research Station in Costa Rica, which is operated by the conservation non-profit organization Maderas Rainforest Conservancy. Dr. Bolt is a member of the board of directors for Maderas Rainforest Conservancy and also leads primate field schools for UTM students at the La Suerte site in Costa Rica. (Posted April 24, 2024)

Adjunct Professor Dr. Laura Bolt's publication "Maderas Rainforest Conservancy: A One Health approach to conservation" was named the most-cited article in American Journal of Primatology during 2022-2023. It was previously named the most-cited article in American Journal of Primatology during 2021-2022. This paper details the ecological, conservation, outreach, and community-building work of the non-profit organization Maderas Rainforest Conservancy, which is dedicated to protecting tropical forests and surrounding communities in Central America. (Posted April 24, 2024)

Stephen Scharper gave a talk entitled "From the Stars to the Street: Cosmology, Climate Chaos, and Environmental Activism" on March 7, 2024 at St. Catherine's College, Oxford University. (Posted March 18, 2024)

Congratulations to Dr. Alicia Hawkins and collaborators at the Sagamok Anishnawbek First Nation and the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation (OCF), who received a Connaught Community Partnership Research Program award for their project exploring the cataloguing and reclamation of archaeological artifacts. View the full story at U of T Celebrates, and learn more about collaborative archaeology at UTM. (Posted March 18, 2024)

Dr. Esteban Parra is listed as a co-author in a reviewed pre-print published in the journal eLife. The paper, which includes multiple authors from the SCOURGE consortium and the COVID-19 Host Genetic Initiative, describes the results of the largest genome-wide association study of COVID-19 hospitalization conducted in Latin America, comprising more than 4,000 hospitalized COVID-19 cases. The study identified four significant associations, including two novel genomic regions. (Posted March 18, 2024)

Dr. Esteban Parra is listed as a co-author in a major study focused on the genetics of type 2 diabetes (T2D) published in the prestigious journal Nature. The article includes authors from institutions throughout the world, working under the umbrella of the newly established Type 2 Diabetes Global Genomics Initiative, and reported the results of a genome-wide association study including more than 2.5 million individuals. The study identified 1,289 independent association signals that map to 611 different genomic regions (including 145 previously unreported regions). Importantly, the genetic data identified different clusters of signals characterized by different cardiometabolic traits, highlighting the aetiological heterogeneity of T2D. (Posted March 18, 2024)

Adjunct Professor Dr. Laura Bolt published three articles in the last month.

Dr. Bolt was lead author on a study published in American Journal of Primatology showing that two monkey species in Costa Rica change their social behaviour when in human-altered areas of forest. Media coverage of the paper can be found at U of T News.

Dr. Bolt was a co-author for a paper in Conservation Letters detailing the importance of funding tropical field stations to enable effective biodiversity conservation. Media coverage of this paper can be found at EurekAlert.

Dr. Bolt was also co-author on a study in Primate Conservation that compared the population size of mantled howler monkeys in two different areas of Costa Rica, a small forest fragment and a large continuous forest, and found that monkey population density was much higher in the small fragment. This attests to their resilience in degraded landscapes, but also has implications for their long-term conservation.  (Posted March 18, 2024)

The graduate students from Winter 2023's seminar ANT3034H Advanced Research Seminar IV: Anthropology of Infectious Disease (Liam Ryan, Erica Fowler, Juliana Upchurch, Grace Gregory-Alcock, Adrianna Wiley, Alexandra Bernyck, Hannah Whitelaw, Dominick Roussel, Ellen Pacheco) and Dr. Madeleine Mant published a special issue of Synapsis: A Health Humanities Journal on the Anthropology of Infectious Disease. View all the articles here. (Posted January 22, 2024)

Dr. Madeleine Mant and colleagues published a case report in the International Journal of Paleopathology describing a 3500-year-old Nubian woman with rheumatoid arthritis. The antiquity and geographical spread of this condition have been controversial in the literature and this publication makes a strong case for the antiquity of this condition in Ancient Egypt. (Posted January 22, 2024)