Jessica Mikels-Carrasco

GLOBES IGERT
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN



Jessica enters the GLOBES program with a BA in Anthropology from the University of Kansas (2000) and an MA in Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma (2006). Her research interests have included a variety of topics, with her master’s thesis combining the field of anthropology with history of science to understand the effects of feminism on the science of human evolution, concentrating her research on the role of Sherwood Washburn and his students in shaping the modern day field of physical anthropology.

In addition to research into the history of science, Jessica has also spent the last two summers in Suriname on a feeding ecology project with a team of researchers from Kent State University and Saint Louis University. It was through work in the tropics, faced with issues of human/forest interactions that she became interested in understanding the concomitant effects of anthropogenic species removal, in particular, the removal of frugivores and primary seed dispersers on future forest dynamics.

For the summer of 2006 she began a research project with Jason McLachlan at Harvard Forest in Massachusetts. This project asks how trees spread across the environment post agricultural abandonment, and will utilize genetic markers to analyze the relatedness of the tree species sampled.

The GLOBES program will allow Jessica to combine her past experiences and training with her desire to dedicate herself to issues of conservation.

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