How Social Environments Influence Health Across Generations

ANTHROPOLOGY COLLOQUIUM SERIES

How Social Environments Influence Health Across Generations

Dr. Zaneta Thayer
Associate professor, Department of Anthropology
Dartmouth College, USA

Monday, October 6th, 2025
11:30 am – 12:45 pm
Cornett B235

How do our social and cultural environments interact with our evolved biology to shape health across generations? This talk uses a biocultural lens and cross-cultural field data to explore why and how pregnancy and birth experiences can have lasting impacts on offspring health. Importantly, socially structured differences in environmental experience can create health inequities through these mechanisms. By unpacking the biocultural pathways facilitating these effects, this work seeks to inform strategies for reducing health inequities and improving maternal and child health outcomes more broadly.

EVERYONE WELCOME

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