The Anthropology Colloquia lecture series continues Nov. 13 at 2 p.m. in the Hibben Center, Room 105. Hosted by The University of New Mexico’s Anthropology Department, the series will feature Derek Boyd, Ph.D., as the latest speaker. He will present a talk titled Who Gets to Breathe? From the Industrial Revolution to the Making of a Modern Forensic Case.
This in-person event is free and open to the public.
Boyd’s talk explores respiratory disease through an anthropological lens, examining cases from industrial-era England to medicolegal deaths in contemporary Las Vegas. He examines how class, race, labor and place affect this ongoing global health crisis.
"The primary question that drives my research concerns how the social and material conditions of daily life shape who gets sick, who dies and whose death goes unwitnessed," said Boyd. "To address this question, I leverage diverse data sets, including human skeletal samples, mortuary context and archival documents from historical and contemporary populations, and embed them within various social theoretical frameworks, including intersectionality and, more recently, structural vulnerability.”
Boyd is the co-director of The University of Nevada, Las Vegas’s (UNLV) Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Laboratory. At UNLV, his research examines how the social and material conditions of daily life shape who gets sick, who dies, and whose death goes unwitnessed. His talk will frame respiratory disease as an anthropological problem: an ongoing global health crisis whose burden falls along the lines of class, race, labor, and place, connecting industrial England to modern Las Vegas.
"I am very excited to lecture on my work. I've been working in industrial-era England for over a decade, but my work with modern populations is just beginning. I am excited to receive feedback on this new phase of my research program from the brilliant students and faculty at UNM," he said.
To learn more about the lecture, visit the event’s webpage.
