Megan is a first-year MA student specializing in medical anthropology. Specifically, her research focuses on how sporting subcultures and the growing social, economic, and political significance of sports shape athletes’ responses to and lived experiences with pain and injury, approaches to and definitions of health, views of risk and risk-taking, and engagement with health-related decision-making and care-seeking.

Megan obtained a Bachelor of Arts with an Honours in Anthropology and a Minor in Health and Society at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Her Honours thesis research focused on the multitude of sporting and non-sporting ways sports medicine and performance staff (i.e., strength and conditioning coaches, athletic trainers, etc.) supported and cared for university athletes within competitive sporting subcultures. Megan has also had experience working as a research assistant at UBC’s Sauder School of Business, and while working as an academic assistant, has helped create Open Access learning materials for anthropology students and instructors.

Outside of her graduate studies, Megan enjoys watching sports, reading comic books and classic literature, baking, and crafting.

Megan would be happy to discuss the field of medical anthropology, graduate school and scholarship applications, finding a graduate supervisor, navigating graduate school, and other questions you may have.

Bailey is a third year Master’s student in archaeology, specifically mortuary archaeology. She is interested in what we can learn from cemeteries and her research investigates trends in the monumental commemoration of older adults over the age of 70 in Cambridgeshire, England in the period 1845-1925. Much of her time is spent working in her supervisor’s database of over 72,000 burials and conducting statistical analyses in it, reading literature on her context under study, and sitting at her desk writing. She has also been involved in many outreach activities in the Department, including being one of the developers of an outreach module on mortuary archaeology and cemeteries.

Before embarking on her Master’s at McMaster, she earned her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) at the University of Manitoba in Anthropology with a minor in Psychology. As part of her degree and also through her volunteer work with the Manitoba Archaeological Society, she has participated in fieldwork at a few precontact Indigenous sites in southwestern Manitoba. Bailey has also worked in the museum sector, where she excited and educated people about Manitoba’s history and took part in the stewardship of collections that are part of that history.

When she is not engaged in academic pursuits, you can find Bailey at a coffee shop with a warm beverage in hand, at trivia night with her friends, or exploring a local cemetery. She is happy to talk grad school and all that it entails, such as the transition from undergrad, how to apply for programs and grants/scholarships, navigating the research and writing processes, and any other questions you may have.

You can contact her at palamarb@mcmaster.ca. Areas of Interest: Archaeology, Mortuary Archaeology, Historical Cemeteries, Commemoration, Perceptions of the Elderly.