New Faculty Announcement

​The Department of Anthropology welcomes Dr. Lydia Light as our most recent tenure-track faculty member. Dr. Light is a biological anthropologist and primate behavioral ecologist with a PhD from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her research focuses on identifying the ways in which nonhuman primates, specifically small apes in Southeast Asia, modify behaviors to cope with challenging ecological conditions. She hopes her research can help primate conservationists construct informative predictions of animal needs in the face of ongoing habitat degradation and climate change. By combining detailed wildlife ecologicy studies with compassionate structurally-informed understandings of lived experiences, Dr. Light uses anthropological approaches to improve biodiversity conservation strategies.