Melissa Remis
Please join me in congratuling Melissa Remis, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education in the College of Liberal Arts and professor of Anthropology on being featured as the cover story for the July/August cover of the American Journal of Human Biology.
The project explored forager communities, conservation, and human-wildlife interaction in the Central African Republic. Melissa collected data from a group of 60 women. She found that the older demographics of women have the highest levels of chronic malrutriation and the lowest hemoglobin levels among foragers. Strikingly, Melissa found that among the older women, 70% had very low hemoglobin levels, which is normally considered a public health crisis by international health agencies.
Dr. Remis’ field-based research in the Central African Republic originally focused on the behavioral ecology of western gorillas, which were poorly known before she initiated her field research in the late 1980s. She is currently engaged in collaborative ecological and ethnographic research on interrelated human and wildlife ecologies, diet, health and social impacts of extractive industry and conservation in Central Africa. This is demonstrated through her affiliation with the Purdue's Center for the Environment.
Congratulations, Dr. Remis!
David A. Reingold
Justin S. Morrill Dean
College of Liberal Arts