This open access volume is the first dedicated to action within bioarchaeology and cognate disciplines, with the aim of fostering social and political change. The editors bring together a diverse range of bioarchaeologists and related practitioners whose work engages with some of the most pressing social issues facing humanity today, including infectious disease, structural violence, healthcare and inequitable access to resources, racial injustice, ethics, food insecurity, displacement, equitable education, and the intersections of these challenges with identities such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and disability. These issues explored in this volume are at the heart of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted in 2015, and encapsulated in the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Each chapter makes explicit connections to contemporary issues and demonstrates how our work can be used to effect social change, offering practical steps for developing an activist lens in research, practice, and academia. This volume will be of interest to academics, practitioners, and students in bioarchaeology and related disciplines.
Sabrina C. Agarwal is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is engaged in the application of research in bone maintenance to dialogues of social identity, embodiment, developmental plasticity, and inequality in bioarchaeology. She has examined age- and growth-related changes in cortical bone microstructure, trabecular architecture, bone mineral density, and bone strength in several historic British and Italian archaeological populations, and has examined the long-term effect of growth and reproduction (parity and lactation) on the human and non-human primate maternal skeleton, and studying samples from prehistoric Turkey and Japan. Her current research is also invested in bioethics of skeletal biology/bioarchaeology, specifically the practice and ethics curation and repatriation of skeletal/ancestral remains. She has numerous peer-reviewed publications and co-edited volumes including Social Bioarchaeology and Exploring Sex and Gender in Bioarchaeology, and co-author of the best-selling textbook Laboratory Manual and Workbook for Biological Anthropology. She is co-founder of the Western Bioarchaeology Group (WeBiG), co-founder and former co-chair of the Bioarchaeology Interest Group in the Society for American Archaeology (SAA), is co-founding Editor-in-Chief of Bioarchaeology International, and currently serves on the Editorial Board of American Antiquity.
Carlina de la Cova is Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Carolina. She specializes in bioarchaeology with a focus on health disparities, ethics, structural violence, and the treatment of historically marginalized populations. Her interdisciplinary research interrogates the legacy of medical racism and the ethical dimensions of anatomical collections, highlighting how social inequality becomes inscribed on the body. She has published extensively on the impact of social marginalization on skeletal health amongst impoverished groups, institutionalized individuals and 19th-century-born African American populations in numerous edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals. In addition to this, de la Cova serves on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Biological Anthropology and American Anthropologist. She is also an Associate Editor for Bioarchaeology International. Dr de la Cova's work has driven critical conversations around the ethics of human remains research, advocating for more transparent, community-engaged, and historically conscious approaches. With her colleagues, she has contributed to national guidelines on the management of legacy anatomical collections and is regarded as a leading voice in the movement to reform anthropological practice around issues of ethics, consent, representation, and social justice. She has chaired the Paleopathology Association's Ethics Sub-Committee and served on the American Association for Anatomy's Ethics and Legacy Collections Task Force and the American Anthropological Association's Commission for the Ethical Treatment of Human Remains. Her current work strives to shape ethical frameworks within biological anthropology and influence policy across academic and forensic settings.
Rebecca Gowland is a Professor of bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology at Durham University where she is Director of the MSc in Human Bioarchaeology and Palaeopathology. She has trained several hundred bioarchaeologists and forensic practitioners at all levels of experience over the last 20 years. She also developed a Massive Open Online Course, which reached over 30, 000 learners in over 130 countries during the five years that it ran. She is especially interested in interactions between the biological tissues of the body and the socio-cultural and physical environment, publishing over 100 articles and book chapters on the topic. Her research has driven methodological and theoretical developments within the field. She has had a particular focus on improving the visibility of marginalised demographics in the past, including infants, children and older people. Rebecca's research also includes the recovery and analysis of skeletal remains from modern forensic contexts and she works alongside a range of international organisations and human rights lawyers to resolve issues of human identification in post-conflict countries and other humanitarian contexts. In addition to her academic work, Rebecca has held a number of senior leadership positions within her institution, with a particular focus on policies and practices relating to people and culture.
Siân Halcrow is a Professor in Bioarchaeology at the University of Otago Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka and holds a British Academy Global Professorship at Durham University. Her research focuses on the anthropology of social justice, through the study of the bioethics of the holding and use of anatomical skeletal individuals; and the societal impacts of climate and environmental change and the agricultural transition through studying the health experiences of the most vulnerable: infants and children. Significant works in this area include Gowland and Halcrow (eds), The Mother-Infant Nexus in the Past: Small Beginnings, significant outcomes (Springer, 2020). She manages the skeletal analyses on several international archaeological projects in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, China, and Chile. Since 2007, she has produced >130 peer reviewed publications in high impact journals and books in the field and secured >9 million in research funding, e.g., Wenner-Gren, National Geographic, Fulbright, NZ Marsden, British Academy. Honours include: The University of Otago Rowhealth Trust Award and Carl Smith Research Medal (2018), the NZ Association of Scientists Hill Tinsley Medal (2018), a NZ Scholar Fulbright Award (2023), and a British Academy Global Professorship (2024).
Gwen Robbins Schug is a Professor of Biology at UNC Greensboro, where her research integrates bioarchaeology, climate change, and social inequality to explore human resilience in the face of environmental crises and other adaptive challenges--from South Asia to Arabia and the Mediterranean. She is particularly interested in how lessons from the past about human variation and diversity can inform contemporary policy on environmental justice and ethical, sustainable development. She was recognized as a Climate and Justice Leader by Grist and the Clinton Global Initiative (2023). She has published >50 peer-reviewed publications, including leading contributions in bioarchaeological ethics, including Robbins Schug, Halcrow, & de la Cova, They Are People Too: The ethics of curation and use of human skeletal remains for teaching and research (American Journal of Biological Anthropology, 2025). She has received two Fulbright Research Fellowships, has been funded by Wenner Gren and the American Institute of Indian Studies, and is currently a co-PI on a National Science Foundation funded project to increase representation and student success in undergraduate STEM education ($999,791 award #2029883). She is heavily involved in service as the Director of the RISE Network (Research and Instruction in STEM Education) at UNCG, which is dedicated to improving DEI in STEM education. She is the Chair-Elect of the UNCG College of Arts and Sciences Executive Committee, and an Advisory Board Member for the Triangle Center for Evolutionary Medicine, among other roles.
