PROF. NOËL CAMERON
Loughborough University, United Kingdom
Topic: Child Growth and Armed Conflict
Noël Cameron is Professor of Human Biology at Loughborough University, UK. He is a graduate of the Universities of Nottingham, Loughborough, and London. At Loughborough he initially studied for an MSc in Human Biology and then pursued a PhD in Medicine at University College London under the supervision of Professor James Tanner at the Institute of Child Health. He was subsequently appointed to a lectureship and undertook research in normal and abnormal child growth. He spent from 1984 to 1997 as Associate (1987) and then Full Professor of Anatomy and Human Biology (1994) in the Department of Anatomy of the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. In addition to several rural longitudinal growth studies, he initiated the Birth to Twenty (Bt20) birth-cohort study in Soweto and Johannesburg in 1991 which has become the longest running and most detailed longitudinal study of child health and growth in any developing country. Noël Cameron returned to the UK in 1997 as Professor of Human Biology at his alma mater, Loughborough University. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 1998 for his significant contribution to research in human biology. He continues to be involved in Bt20, the Born in Bradford Birth Cohort initiated in 2007, and the Croatian Islands Birth Study initiated in 2015. Longitudinal data from these birth cohort studies facilitate his research into the early determinants of risk for non-communicable disease of lifestyle such as obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and cardio-vascular disease. He is also involved in elucidating the ontogeny of our human ancestors through the analysis of fossil remains of Australopithecus sediba and Homo naledi from sites in the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa. He has published over 300 peer reviewed papers, scholarly chapters, and 7 books, is editor of the Annals of Human Biology and an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Pediatric Obesity. Noël Cameron is Secretary General of the International Society for the Study of Human Growth and Clinical Auxology (ISGA), and President of the European Anthropological Association. He was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania (1990), Visiting Professor of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University (2008-2010) and the William Evans Visiting Fellow at Otago University, New Zealand (2015) and is an Honorary Research Associate of the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He was awarded the Doctor of Science (DSc) degree from Loughborough University in 2018 for his significant contribution to knowledge in human growth and development.
PROF. SYLVIA KIRCHENGAST
Department of Evolutionary Anthropology
University of Vienna, Austria
Topic: Motherhood in a Changing World - the Challenge of Female Reproduction from the Viewpoint of Evolutionary Anthropology
Sylvia Kirchengast is currently professor of Anthropology/Human Biology at the department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Vienna, where she has been a faculty member since 1994. She gave guest lectures at the University of Innsbruck. Since 2012 she is study program director for Biology and deputy head of the bioethical committee of the University of Vienna. She completed her Ph.D. (Human Biology) as well as her undergraduate studies (Biology, Cultural Anthropology) at the University of Vienna. 1998 she completed her Habilitation for Human Biology and Anthropology at the University of Vienna. She was involved in several international and national scientific projects. She was part of the emerging field project “Comparative Human life history” at the University of Vienna. From 2000 to 2005 she was board member of the German Anthropological Society. From 2013 to 2017 she was deputy head of the German Anthropological Society. She founded the Working Group Biological Genders Studies within the German Anthropological Society and was member of the Gender and Agency Group at the University of Vienna. She published more than 250 papers and book chapters.
Her research interests lie in the area of Evolutionary life history, in particular female life history, menopause, Growth studies, Fetal development, Childhood obesity, Body composition research, Evolutionary medicine, Public Health, Migration and Health, Bioarcheology and Gender studies
PROF. CHRISTOPHER KUZAWA
Department of Anthropology and Institute for Policy Research
Northwestern University, US
Topic: Prenatal Nutrition as an Influence on Future Health and Human Capital: Strategies for Harnessing a Challenging Policy Lever
Professor Christopher Kuzawa is a biological anthropologist with interests in developmental biology, human evolution, and health. He is Professor of Anthropology and Faculty Fellow with the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, located outside Chicago (US). His research explores developmental influences on adult biology and health, the psychobiology of human fatherhood, non-genetic forms of biological inheritance, and the energetics and evolution of the human brain. He is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He co-directs the Health Inequality Network of the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group and serves on the Advisory Committee for the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Directorate of the National Science Foundation of the US. He received his PhD in Anthropology and MSPH in Epidemiology from Emory University (Atlanta, US).
PROF. CHARLOTTE ROBERTS
Durham University, United Kingdom
Topic: Human Variation and Adaptation in a Changing World: Perspectives from the Past Using Palaeopathology
Professor Charlotte Roberts is a bioarchaeologist who has studied and interpreted human remains from archaeological sites for the past 35 years. She also has a first career in nursing, and was elected as a Fellow to the British Academy in 2014. Professor Roberts is specifically interested in exploring the interaction of people with their environments in the past through palaeopathology, and especially those health problems that are common today. Her key research interests lie in: contextual approaches to past human health; contemporary health; evolutionary approaches to the origin, evolution and history of infectious diseases; big data projects in palaeopathology; and ethics related to human remains. Charlotte is very passionate about engaging audiences with her research beyond academia. She tries to utilize multiple lines of evidence for reconstructing past health, including exploring the application of medical anthropological and evolutionary biological approaches to bioarchaeology. Charlotte's nursing background, particularly, has guided her into taking an holistic approach to past ill health in bioarchaeological research, something that was also considered essential in a hospital environment. Understanding why and how people and communities today experience health problems is essential to be able to understand ill health in the past. Key authored and edited book publications include: The backbone of Europe (with R. Steckel, C. Larsen and J. Baten), Human remains in archaeology (2nd ed. 2018), The global history of paleopathology (2012, with J. Buikstra), The archaeology of disease (3rd ed. 2005, with K. Manchester), Health and disease in Britain (2003, with M. Cox), The bioarchaeology of tuberculosis (with J. Buikstra), and Leprosy. Past and present (2020). Professor Roberts has also published over 100 journal papers and around 100 book chapters.
PROF. WULF SCHIEFENHÖVEL
Human Ethology Group Max Planck Institute for
Biological Intelligence Starnberg-Seewiesen, Germany
Topic: From Stone Age to Computer in Two Generations. Dramatic Cultural Change in Highland Papua, as Proof of the Plasticity of the Human Brain
Head, Human Ethology Group, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Andechs, Germany. Study of medicine in Munich and Erlangen, MD 1970, Habilitation for Medical Psychology and Ethnomedicine 1984, professorship 1991 at University of Munich. Founding member of Human Sciences Centre, University of Munich, guest professor for Human Ethology at Institute of Psychology, University of Innsbruck since 1990, guest lecturer at Medical Faculty, Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta, guest lecturer Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen since 1997. Cofounder of ethnomedicine in Germany. Fieldstudies in anthropology, medical anthropology and human ethology in Melanesia since 1965. Ongoing research, since 1974, among the Eipo, a Highland Papuan group of the Mek cultures and languages in the Province of Papua/Indonesia; since 2013 joint archaeological, ethnoarchaeological and anthropological research project in Papua with Dr. Marian Vanhaeren, senior archaeologist, CNRS and University of Bordeaux.
Research fields: human ethology, evolutionary anthropology, evolutionary medicine, language and cognition, human sexuality and reproduction, anthropology of food, ethnomedicine, medical anthropology, ethnoarchaeology, genetics and history of populations in Melanesia. 397 publications and 30 books (authored, coauthored, edited, coedited). Latest work: Brüne, Martin & Schiefenhövel, Wulf (editors) The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Medicine, Oxford University Press, 2019
