My Biography
Alyssa Crittenden and William Dressler have been selected as co-recipients of the 2021 Conrad M. Arensberg award. This honor recognizes individuals who have furthered anthropology as a natural science.
Alyssa Crittenden’s research combines methods of evolutionary anthropology, human behavioral ecology, and cultural anthropology to address fundamental questions about relationships between human behavior and environment – ecological, political, and social. Specifically, her work on the diets of Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania has transformed our understandings of human reproduction, growth and development, child and maternal health, family formation, and cooperative breeding. Crittenden’s work was the first to sequence the gut microbiome of a non-industrialized small-scale population, and she has pioneered non-invasive methods for measuring oral health.