Publications & Projects

Beyond
Cultural History?

This article, co-written with Dr. Willemijn Ruberg, critically analyzes new approaches in the field of body history, particularly the “material turn.” It argues that the material turn has a lot to offer historians of the body, such as more attention to material practices, to different kinds of actors, and a more open eye to encounters.

Biometry Against
Fascism

In this article, published in Isis, I discuss how biometrician Geoffrey Morant mobilized new statistical methods to debunk Nazi racial theories. In fighting racism, however, he did not dismiss the biological reality of race. The paper argues that the coexistence of race and antiracism is an important feature to the anthropological study of human variation in the 20th century.

Old Bones in New Databases

I’m currently working on an article, forthcoming with American Anthropologist, with Dr. Lisette Jong that analyzes the use of racial categorization practices in forensic anthropology. The project studies ForDisc, software that automates ancestry estimation by comparing measurements of an unknown skeleton to skeletal reference samples. We trace the data journey of one of these samples, a historical collection of Egyptian skulls collected in the early 20th century.

Transnational Connections

This special issue, published in Perspectives on Science, explores the transnational dynamics in the anthropological and genetic study of human populations in the twentieth century. Co-edited with Elise Burton and Jaehwan Hyun, the pieces in this issue introduce important new geographies, continuities, and relations to the historical discussion of human variation research in the twentieth century. My article discusses the standardization work of Miriam Tildesley and shows how method became the site of gendered and nationalistic gatekeeping.