Biography: Katherine Bishop is a PhD Candidate at the University of Alberta. She did her BSc in medical sciences, her MA in biological anthropology, and is now researching pastoralism in ancient Greece. She currently works as an archaeologist and faunal expert for a Cultural Resource Management firm in Canada. As a bioarchaeologist, Katherine studies human and animal bones to help explore questions about modern and ancient history. In doing this, she has applied her anthropology background to research in forensic sciences, disease and nutrition, and biochemistry. Her education has given her opportunities to serve as a forensic anthropology consultant, participate in anthropology-related projects with municipal and provincial governments, and be a part of archaeological research in Peru, Greece, Italy, and Canada. During her lecture, she will draw from her own background and experiences to explore opportunities in anthropology and the various applications of this field.

Biography: Paula Torres Peña is an Ecuadorian archaeologist and biological anthropologist. Since 2010, she has participated in more than twenty different archaeological research projects, often as a bioarchaeological consultant or as a field and laboratory assistant. Many of these archaeological projects have focused on studying early human settlements in the Northern Highlands of Ecuador, some of which were hunter-gatherers or early agriculturalists contemporary with the first appearance of ceramics. Other projects have studied human settlements in the coastal region or the Amazon. In 2015, she obtained her Bachelor's degree in Anthropology with a Major in Archaeology from the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Ecuador. Her thesis research focused on analyzing human skeletal remains and studying funerary practices in pre-Hispanic sites in the Quito Valley. Later, in 2018, she completed her Master’s program in Anthropology at the University of Alberta. Her research examined human diets in three archaeological sites using stable isotope analysis. In addition, a comparison of her data with previous studies allowed her to identify dietary changes across three time periods. Over the last decade, Paula has participated in several national and international conferences and workshops. She has also been a forensic expert in police searches in Canada, and a lecturer of Physical Anthropology in Ecuador.

Biography: Kevin Chavez Laxamana is a Filipino-Canadian sociocultural anthropologist and his research program and training focus is on comparative gender and/or (transgender) queer studies in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines). Currently, he is writing on the "disrupted" life cycles of Balinese and Singaporean transgender women sex workers by analyzing their diverse experiences and stories of transitioning and de-transitioning. This includes histories of hormone therapies and sexual reassignment surgeries, participation in beauty and/or sex work, religion, romantic and familial relationships, concepts of national belonging, and death. Data for this research was gathered during his ethnographic fieldwork in the region in summer 2017, in partnership with Project X - Singapore (Singapore) and Yayasan Gaya Dewata (Bali, Indonesia). In 2018, he was a Visiting Scholar and Fellow with the Chair in Transgender Studies and the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria. In 2020, he was named as one of Alberta’s Top 30 Under 30 for 2020. This is an annual award and campaign by the Alberta Council for Global Cooperation (ACGC) featuring “30 outstanding young people, nominated by their community and selected by a committee of peers, for their commendable work in making the world a more just, fair, and sustainable place for all.” Kevin is completing his PhD studies at the University of Alberta. He is an award-winning educator and currently teaches at NorQuest College (Canada) and the University of the Philippines Baguio.

Biography: Dr. Victoria van der Haas is an archaeologist and biological anthropologist, having conducted research on three continents, spanning over ten years. Her main research interests concern the life-histories of prehistoric hunter-gatherers in Asia. In 2010, Victoria received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Archaeology with a minor in Human Osteology from Leiden University in The Netherlands. A year later, she was awarded her Master of Arts degree in Palaeolithic Archaeology with a minor in Archaeological Heritage Management from the same university. Her thesis, titled “Argon-argon dating of Trinil shells: establishing an age for Pithecanthropus erectus,” focused on the famous Homo erectus fossils from Trinil in Java, Indonesia. Her M.A. research ended up being part of a broader study on the behaviour and dietary choices of Homo erectus. Since then, results have been published in the journal Nature. After completing her graduate degree, Victoria worked on numerous projects for government agencies and a not-for-profit organization that focused on the protection and preservation of cultural heritage. Between 2014 and 2020, she went on to work towards a Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Alberta in Canada. Her research was on Holocene hunter-gatherers that lived in the Lake Baikal region of Siberia, Russia. With the use of biochemistry (stable isotope analysis), she examined the dentition of those hunter-gatherers to learn more about their dietary choices and, ultimately, their way of life. During her time as a doctoral student, she also spent several summers working on a multi-occupational site in Hokkaido, Japan, as an archaeologist and teaching assistant.

Biography: Dr. Sandra Garvie-Lok is a bioarchaeologist, researching past lives through human skeletal remains. She received her BA (Anthropology) from the University of Winnipeg and her MA and PhD (Archaeology) from the University of Calgary. She joined the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta in 2003. Her research uses stable isotope analysis, skeletal pathology, and mortuary analysis to study diet, health, and mobility in the past. Most of this research has been done in Greece and the Central Plains region of China. Currently, her main research activity in Greece is her work in Thessaly, where she is collaborating with Dr. Margriet Haagsma (University of Alberta) and Dr. Sophia Karapanou (Ephorate of Antiquities of Larissa) to examine Hellenistic landscape use and Iron Age mortuary practices. In China, she is collaborating with Dr. Zhou Yawei (Zhengzhou University) to study life in the Central Plains during the Late Neolithic, focusing on death in childbirth and how women and infants who died in this way were buried.