The AAA welcomes back Agustin Fuentes for another Webinar Wednesday, this time joined by Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. Please note our different time this week: 11 AM Eastern. Utilizing Lisa’s recent work “The Bedey/Badarwala/Ahikuntaka of South Asia” as a case study, they will explore health, evolutionary histories, and the current complexities of “emerging” dieseases, highlighting the applied context/outcomes of anthropology in the field. The webinar will be split between a 40 minute conversation between the two presenters and a 20 minute Q&A period.
Agustín Fuentes, trained in zoology and anthropology, is a professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. His research delves into the how and why of being human. From chasing monkeys in the jungles and cities of Asia, to exploring the lives of our evolutionary ancestors, to examining what people actually do across the globe, Professor Fuentes is interested in both the big questions and the small details of what makes humans and our closest relatives tick. Fuentes is author of Race, Monogamy and Other Lies They Told You: Busting Myths About Human Nature (University of California Press).
Dr. Jones-Engel is a primatologist who has worked for the better part of her career at bio-medical research centers in the United States. Her primate research career has straddled the field, the natural habitat for nonhuman primates, and the research laboratory. For 30 years she has worked at the human-primate interface in Asia, characterizing the way that humans and macaques interact and developing strategies to detect the infectious agents that are transmitted at this porous boundary. Her research continues to illustrate the concept that both historically, as well as contemporarily, humans and nonhuman primates often constitute a single reservoir in which pathogens can evolve and emerge. She began her exposure to primates at the age of 17 working as a field research assistant for Dr. Birute Galdikas in Kalimantan, Indonesia. She then went on to receive her BA from Cornell University and while completing her MA at NYU she worked as an animal technician at LEMSIP where she hand-reared three young chimpanzees under the tutelage of Dr. Jim Mahoney. Positions supervising primate rehabilitation centers in Africa and Thailand and twin daughters kept her quite busy until she completed her PhD at the University of New Mexico in 2002. For the past 10 years she has been at the Washington National Primate Research Center where she has built a multidisciplinary, international research program (Evolution and Emergence of Infectious Diseases) that integrates microbiology, epidemiology, bioinformatics, GIS and primatology as well as human and veterinary medicine.
The event will be held September 16th at 11 AM Eastern. Register for the event here! the password is “anthro”.
Other than Me wart definition on primate , how will you define primate and also enlighten us about this theory that missing metatarsal theory put chimpanzee near to human being . How will you correlate people with primate on this issue. One more thing which I want to add here ” how much chimpanzee or macac monkeys are responsible for HIV infection
I am very happy to hear that AAA is going to discuss People Primates and Pathogens…. I want to add my submission as an query that Chimpanzee as nearest to human being at the level of genes ,DNA and chromosomes but still I am little bit confused to understand that theory which explains evolution of man from chimpanzee as a result of mutation. How could it be possible that carrier of 48 chromosomes chimpanzee converted into human being after the mutation. I don’t know how could one pair of chromosomes reduction made human being . Is it possible by hypothetical theory of mutation ? any anthropologist will enlighten me n this confusing issue