Elizabeth Hall
Please join me in congratulating Elizabeth Hall, a graduate student in anthropology, on receiving the Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant from the National Science Foundation in support of her project, “Zoonotic Risks at the Human-Primate Interface: Behavior, Nutritional Status and Immune Function.”
Liz’s project entails conducting fieldwork over a 15-month period with local communities in the Dzanga-Sangha reserve in the Central African Republic. She will collect data on diet, nutritional status, and behavior of indigenous and migrant men and women with different subsistence patterns and practices that may put them at varying risk for zoonotic diseases. She will be collecting a variety of anthropometric and ethnographic data. Her research also includes laboratory analysis of biomarkers of health and inflammation.
Liz's research is focused at the human-wildlife interface in Central Africa and aims to improve understanding of both human and wildlife health in this region in addition to understanding particular risks of zoonotic infectious disease emergence in human populations. This research is informed by her previous experiences collecting observational health data on wild lowland gorillas in the Republic of Congo with Wildlife Conservation Society in 2012. Her dissertation work also builds on a 2016 pilot study in APDS conducted in collaboration with her advisor, Dr. Melissa Remis, professor of anthropology, and her long-term research projects.
Congratulations, Elizabeth!
David A. Reingold
Justin S. Morrill Dean
College of Liberal Arts