Research Activities

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)

Todd Sanders published “Retooling US Settler-Colonialism: The Native’s Point of View” in Current Anthropology 65(5), 936-938. It is an extended review of Valerie Lambert's Native Agency: Indians in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and reflects on Native North America, tribal sovereignty, and American Anthropology's complicity in US settler-colonialism. (Posted November 25, 2024)

Adjunct Professor Dr. Laura Bolt has been awarded the "Primates 2024 most-cited paper award" by the journal Primates. This award announcement was published in the November 2024 issue of Primates.

Dr. Bolt won the award for her first-authored paper entitled "Anthropogenic edges impact howler monkey (Alouatta palliata) feeding behaviour in a Costa Rican rainforest", which found that monkeys fed from smaller trees and on poorer quality foods when closer to the human-disturbed edges of a fragmented forest. (Posted November 14, 2024)

Research from the Schreiber Wood Project (SWP), the UTM Anthropology archaeological field school project, has been well represented at two recent conferences. Dr. Sarah Ranlett, now at Yale University, presented a poster, coauthored by Dr. Michael Brand and Dr. Trevor Orchard, entitled “The Schreiber Wood Project at University of Toronto Mississauga: An Historical Southern Ontario Residential Landscape through the Lens of an On-Campus Field School” at the Council for Northeast Historical Archaeology (CNEHA) Annual Meeting, held October 17 to 20, 2024, in New Haven, Connecticut.

The project was also represented by two posters and one oral presentation at the 51^st Annual Symposium of the Ontario Archaeological Society, held October 25 to 27, 2024, in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Undergraduate work-study students Carly Ward (“An assemblage of collaboration: A Student perspective on the Schreiber Wood Project”) and MacKayla Perry-Wessler (“Earthly possessions: Analyzing terracotta flowerpot variation from late 19th-century Mississauga”) presented posters based on their ongoing work with the SWP collections, while Trevor Orchard presented a paper, coauthored with Michael Brand and Sarah Ranlett, entitled “The Schreiber Wood Project: Teaching Archaeology, Facilitating Student Research and Engagement, and Understanding a Late-19^th Century Euro-Canadian Occupation in Mississauga”. 

These recent poster presentations, along with all previous posters and publications from the project, can be found on the Schreiber Wood Project Publications and Posters web page. (Posted November 7, 2024)

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)