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This page features recent publications, conference presentations, and research talks by UTM Anthropology faculty and graduate students. Learn more about our faculty research interests.
Creighton Avery co-edited a new volume "Small Adults or Big Kids? Exploring Archaeological and Bioarcheological Approaches to Adolescence" published by Berghahn Books. The book "explores the meaning of adolescence through the analysis of material culture, historical documents, skeletal remains, isotope analysis, and other lines of evidence". (December 5, 2025)
New open-access research by Monica Ramsey and co-author Anna Florin (ANU) shows that plant use was core to early human survival and adaptation globally. “The Broad Spectrum Species: Plant-Use and Processing as Deep-Time Adaptations” is published in the Journal of Archaeological Research. Learn more about Dr. Ramsey's research on the RLEA website. (November 26, 2025)
The annual meeting of the Canadian Association for Biological Anthropology (CABA-ACAB) was held in early November in Victoria, B.C., and well attended by UTM anthropology. Dr. Maddy Mant presented virtually with a paper entitled, Pregnancy, precarity, and production at a pan grave cemetery in Sheikh Mohamed, Gharb Aswan, Egypt. Dr. Creighton Avery co-hosted a session with Sarah Oresnik (McMaster University) entitled, The Messy Middle: The Complexities and Richness that Accompanies Working with Adolescents. The session included a wide range of research focused on adolescents, including Dr. Avery’s talk Puberty as an indicator of biological, social, and neurological changes in Roman Imperial-age Italy.
PhD Candidate, Sarah Friesen presented her paper on Comparing magnitudes of morphological integration in the catarrhine ankle and knee, while PhD student Grace Gregory-Alcock (along with co-author Dr. Tracy Rogers) presented their poster Human histology in anthropology: a scoping literature review of methods, variables and elements studied.
Four undergraduate students supervised by UTM faculty also presented posters. Nikki Barlow (A consumer’s consumption: The effects of Industrial Revolution on tuberculosis rates), and Kaelyn Moran (Collagen clues: Dietary difference between Maya and Aztec populations revealed through stable isotopic analysis) presented research formed during ANT 441: Advanced Bioarchaeology (Winter 2025), co-authored by Alex Saly and Dr. Avery. Lie Nie (along with co-authors Dr. Laura Bolt and A.L. Schrier) presented their poster An analysis of the positional behaviour and substrate use of mantled howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata) in an anthropogenically fragmented forest). Additionally, Carly Ward (Disease control or simply pets: Domestic cats as animal technologies used by the Schreiber family), presented material from her Work Study Program with the Schreiber Wood Project, with support of Dr. Trevor Orchard and Dr. Michael Brand.
UTM anthropology was very well represented at the recent Ontario Archaeological Society symposium, held in Windsor from October 17 to 19, 2025. Dr. Michael Brand and Dr. Trevor Orchard, along with former UTM anthropology undergraduate students Mackenzie Greenhalgh and Natasa Zdjelar, and former UofT PhD student Dr. Sarah Ranlett, presented a paper entitled Training the next generation of heritage practitioners: Perspectives from the Schreiber Wood Project. Dr. Alicia Hawkins presented a paper entitled Well Placed Trust: The Role of the OHT in Stewardship of Indigenous Archaeological Sites in Ontario. Current sessional lecturer (and former PhD student) Dr. Tiziana Gallo presented a paper exploring Gerontomorphia or persistent practices? A look at steel-modified ground stone gorgets of Southern Ontario.
Several graduate students supervised by UTM faculty presented papers or posters, including Yuening Chen (Percolation Theory and Archaeological Test Pit Sampling: Monte Carlo Simulations of Ontario Survey Protocols), Evelyn Fransoo (Tracing the Introduction of Rats Across 19th-Century Lake Ontario Settlements Using Archival Newspapers), Kayla Mander (Feathered Friends: An Osteobiography of a Mid-19th to Early-20th Century Peacock Burial from a Euro-Canadian Homestead in Southern Ontario), and Logan Warner (Cultural Heritage of the Boyd Archaeological Field School).
Two posters were presented by current UTM anthropology undergraduate students summarizing their current work study research on aspects of the Schreiber Wood Project archaeological collections: Nini Ning (What’s in the Medicine Chest? An Overview of the Schreiber Wood Project Medical Assemblage), and Carly Ward (Rabbits, and voles, and frogs, oh my! Considering assemblages of small fauna in late 19th century Mississauga).
Even the children of UTM faculty gave a paper, with Sofia Orchard (daughter of Dr. Trevor Orchard) and Aibhlin Rogers (daughter of Dr. Michael Brand and Dr. Tracy Rogers) giving a paper entitled The Boyd Archaeological Field School: The Perspective of Two 2025 Field School Students.
(October 22, 2025)
Tracey Galloway's research on northern food insecurity was recently highlighted in a feature story on the hunger crisis in Nunavut by APTN News. (October 17, 2025)
Former PhD student (2021) Andrew Harris is first author on a major study in Antiquity, conducting a detailed analysis of over 1,000 1st millennium CE “Rising Sun/Srivatsa” silver coins from museums in Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the UK to explore early regional trade. One standout finding showed coins from Vietnam and Bangladesh were struck from the same die (tools)—clear evidence of long-distance connections across ancient Southeast Asia—while the study also highlighted broader patterns of coin production and circulation in this little-understood chapter of global economic history. The research has attracted international attention, with Nature calling it “compelling evidence of long-distance connectivity,” alongside coverage in Archaeology Magazine, Popular Science, and Phys.org. The next phase of the study will expand to include the tens of thousands of coins from Myanmar, their region of origin, once conditions allow safe access. (September 25, 2025)
Professor Maddy Mant and colleagues published an article regarding a unique early Medieval burial (680-810 AD) of an adult female on the foreshore of the River Thames, London, UK. The article "Evidence for punishment and execution on the foreshore: a unique early medieval burial (680-810 CE) from London" appears in World Archaeology (September 15, 2025)
Stephen Scharper and Hilary Cunningham co-authored a book chapter "The 'Living Border': Critical Border Studies in a Time of Climate Change," in Border Studies: A Multidisciplinary Approach published by Edward Elgar Publishing. (September 2, 2025)
Dr. Creighton Avery is the author of a new book published online by Cambridge University Press. Bioarchaeology of Infants and Children" introduces the reader to the topic and to common methodological approaches used to consider non-adult remains from archaeological contexts. With this toolkit in hand, readers will be able to begin their own explorations and analyses of non-adult human remains within archaeological contexts." The book is free to download until September 11, 2025. (September 2, 2025)
Dr. David Samson is co-author of an article published in Current Biology. The paper, "Wild orangutans maintain sleep homeostasis through napping, counterbalancing socio-ecological factors that interfere with their sleep", examines "sleep homeostasis and the factors that influence sleep duration among wild Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii), leveraging a comprehensive long-term dataset of their behavior, sociality, and ecology". (Posted June 26, 2025)
Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Mustahid Husain received an NSERC grant of $360,000 for his upcoming project "Building Cultural Bridges: Art as Dialogue between Toronto's Bangladeshi-Canadian Youth and Parents Across Gender Identities." This inclusive community project aims to establish, among other initiatives, the Bangladeshi-Canadian Immigrant Archive for diaspora engagement, particularly focusing on intergenerational dialogues. Dr. Husain's supervisor, Dr. Firat Bozcali, is a co-applicant/participant in this project. (Posted June 4, 2025)
Dr. Lauren Schroeder is an author of an article published in Science, entitled "Enamel proteins reveal biological sex and genetic variability in southern African Paranthropus". In this paper, we report the recovery of enamel proteins from four ~2-million-year-old Paranthropus robustus teeth from South Africa. These ancient proteins enabled us to determine the biological sex of the individuals and revealed subtle genetic differences between them. The successful use of palaeoproteomics in an African hominin context marks a significant advancement in the field, opening up exciting new ways to study the diversity of our early ancestors. (Posted June 3, 2025)
Congratulations to PhD student Sarah Hazell, Dr. Alicia Hawkins and partners from Sagamok Anishnawbek, Ojibwe Cultural Foundation for receiving an Ontario Heritage Award for "Pathways to Reclamation: The La Cloche Cataloguing, Learning, and Sharing Project," an archaeological cataloguing project supported by the Connaught Community Partnership Research Program. (Posted May 6, 2025)
Adjunct Professor Dr. Laura Bolt has co-authored a study entitled "Mantled howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata) modify activity and spatial cohesion in response to seasonality" in the journal BIOS. This article investigates seasonal differences in howler monkey activity budgets and proximity to other monkeys at La Selva Research Station in Costa Rica in order to determine howler monkey flexibility as dry seasons increase in length due to climate change. Bolt and colleagues found that monkeys maintained greater distance from other monkeys and spent less time resting and more time feeding during the dry season (December - April), likely due to increased feeding competition and lower nutritional yields when compared to the wet season (May - November). (Posted April 2, 2025)
Todd Sanders gave the keynote lecture – "Fracking and the Art of Governing in Digital Times" – at Western University’s 12th Annual WAGS Conference, Entanglement in the Digital Era: Technology’s Imprint on Society, Research, and Humanities in the 21st Century. (Posted March 24, 2025)
Dr. David Samson and PhD candidate Leela McKinnon have a new publication entitled Are We Really in a Sleep Crisis? A Global Look at How We Snooze in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The CDC calls it an epidemic, but new global sleep data tell a different story. Using biometric sleep tracking (n = 54 studies, 866 participants), we put two big sleep theories to the test. Industrialized societies, despite their tech-driven lifestyles, actually sleep longer and more efficiently. Meanwhile, non-industrial groups boast the strongest circadian rhythms. The real problem? Poor chronohygiene in industrialized settings is throwing our body clocks out of sync. It’s less about lost sleep and more about when—and how—we’re sleeping. Time to rethink the “sleep crisis” narrative! (Posted March 17, 2025)
Hayley Welsh, a PhD student supervised by Dr. Esteban Parra, has recently published an article in the journal Clinical Epigenetics, describing longitudinal changes in DNA methylation patterns in a cohort of elderly Brazilians. The study identified many age-associated differentially methylated probes and regions in the sample. (Posted March 3, 2025)
Liye Xie recently gave a talk entitled "From Earth to States: Public Works and Governance in Early China" as part of the Jackman Humanties Institute (JHI) Alumni Research Lecture Series. Professor Xie completed a 6-month JHI Faculty Research Fellowship in 2023-24. You can view the recording on the JHI YouTube channel. (Posted January 10, 2025)