Research Cluster: Embodiment, Health and Wellbeing
![](https://anthropology.mcmaster.ca/app/uploads/2024/07/Untitled-design-35.png)
Embodiment, Health and Wellbeing
This cluster explores the sociocultural, biological, and political facets of embodied life through ethnographic and historical perspectives.
We also examine how science, technology, media and medicine reconfigure ideas of health, illness and the body. Current research includes mental health, metabolic and infectious diseases, paleogenomics, the politics of global health, nutrition, ethics, inequalities, and the material body.
Affiliated Courses
1AB3: Race, Religion, and Violence
1AA3: Sex, Food and Death
2AN3: Food and Nutrition
2DO3: DNA Meets Anthropology
2EE3: Sport and/as Religion
2EO3: Intro to Biological Anthropology
2FF3: Skeletal Biology & Bioarchaeology
2HH3: Science, Technology, and Society
2RP3: Religion and Power in the Past
2UO3: Plagues and Peoples
3CAC: Ceramic Analysis
3CO3: Health and Environment
3FA3: Forensic Anthropology
3HI3: Anthropology of Health, Illness, and Healing
3LA3: Lithics Analysis
3PP3: Paleopathology
4CC3: Archaeology of Foodways
4DN3: Diet and Nutrition
4DO3: Zombies and the Undead
4GS3: Genetics and Society
4RO3: Advanced Skeletal Biology
704: Intro to Anthropology of Religion
709: Medical Anthropology
734: Indigenous Knowledge
740: Biocultural Synthesis
741: Metabolic Disease
746: Bioarchaeology
749: Gastronomic Heritage
796: Religion, Illness, and Healing
Researchers
![Cal Biruk headshot image](https://anthropology.mcmaster.ca/app/uploads/2024/07/Cal-Biruk-2-150x150.jpg)
Cal Biruk
PhD
Associate Professor, Anthropology
Graduate Chair, Anthropology
![](https://experts.mcmaster.ca/harvestedImages/fullImages/1230.jpg)
Dawn Martin-hill
PhD
Professor, Anthropology
![Hendrik Poinar headshot image](https://anthropology.mcmaster.ca/app/uploads/2024/07/Hendrik-Poinar-2-150x150.jpg)
Hendrik Poinar
PhD
Professor, Anthropology
Associate Member, Biology, Faculty of Science
Joint Appointment, Biochemistry & Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences
Member, Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research (IIDR), Faculty of Health Sciences
Member, Origins Institute, Faculty of Science
Associate Member, Biology, Faculty of Science
![Megan Brickley headshot image](https://anthropology.mcmaster.ca/app/uploads/2024/07/Megan-Brickley-2-150x150.jpg)
Megan Brickley
PhD
Professor, Anthropology
Graduate Chair, Anthropology
Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) Bioarchaeology of Human Disease
![Tina Moffat headshot image](https://anthropology.mcmaster.ca/app/uploads/2024/07/Tina-Moffat-2-150x150.jpg)
Tina Moffat
PhD
Associate Professor, Anthropology
Adjunct & Associate Member, Health, Aging & Society
![Tracy Prowse headshot image](https://anthropology.mcmaster.ca/app/uploads/2024/07/Tracy-Prowse-2-150x150.png)
Tracy Prowse
PhD
Associate Dean, Academic, Anthropology
Associate Professor, Anthropology
Associate Editor, American Journal of Biological Anthropology
Research Programs
Departmental faculty and graduate students fit into one or more research programs (sub-fields).
Research Clusters
While the department covers four main Research Programs (sub-fields) in Anthropology, we also integrate our Research Programs in the below six key areas of expertise and investigation.