My Biography
As an anthropologist, Adam Van Arsadale is interested in the various ways humans construct knowledge about the human condition. As a biological anthropologist specializing in paleoanthropology, his work focuses in particular on how evolutionary theory can be used to understand human biological variation through patterns observed in the human fossil record. He is currently involved in several projects that grow directly out of these interests. He has a strong passion for the fieldwork side of paleoanthropology. Since graduate school, he has maintained a long-standing research interest in the fossil evidence for the dispersal of fossil humans within and beyond Africa. For more than a decade, he worked at—and helped co-develop a field school at—the Lower Paleolithic site of Dmanisi, Georgia, one of the earliest fossil hominin sites outside of Africa, dating to approximately 1.8 million years before present. In recent years, his research has shifted eastward to Kazakhstan, where he continues to investigate questions related to dispersal, population structure, and the eco-geographic constraints shaping Paleolithic populations. He is currently conducting National Geographic–funded exploratory research in south-central Kazakhstan, aimed at identifying new fossil and archaeological localities that may shed light on the complex demographic structure of hominin populations during the Middle and Late Pleistocene. One of his central passions within biological anthropology is making the ideas and materials of human evolution more accessible to the public. He recently completed production of the podcast series Running for Science: Science for Running, which highlighted research on the evolution of human running—including anatomy, biomechanics, energetics, and neurobiology—while also chronicling his own training for his first Boston Marathon. He has also worked to develop more accessible teaching resources through the creation, in collaboration with campus colleagues, of a virtual-reality (VR) evolutionary anatomy lab. This VR application allows students to access, explore, and interact with human skeletal anatomy and the human fossil record in ways not possible in the physical classroom. Another research interest that has emerged directly from his teaching at Wellesley focuses on how increasingly available human genetic and genomic data inform our understanding of what it means to be human. Genetic data derived from both living populations and fossil remains have become critical sources of information about our evolutionary past. At the same time, such data are increasingly available on a personal level through clinical genetic testing and direct-to-consumer genetic services. How these forms of data intersect with concepts such as race, ancestry, and individuality is complex and shaped by social, legal, and political structures in addition to the biology of the genome itself. In his teaching, he strives to connect anthropological material to the lived experiences of students. His courses include introductory biological anthropology, forensic anthropology, human evolution, race and human variation, (in)visible Native America, anthropological genetics, and personal genomics. Outside of life at the College, he spends most of his time with his wife, a member of Wellesley’s French Department, their three children, and the family dog. He is happiest when outdoors, watching sports, or preparing—and enjoying—good food.