I am a biocultural anthropologist investigating how stress and social inequality produce intergenerational health inequities. I use both ethnographic and quantitative molecular methods to explore how stress impacts health across generations. I work in communities affected by violence and dispossession in Guatemala, the U.S. Southeast, and Rwanda.
Beyond this, my work also considers the ethical implications of studying trauma in the body using biological data.
I teach about the social determinants of health across the life course, what constitutes “healthy” development, and the biopolitics of human variation.
My latest work, The Period Biology Study, develops methods for epigenetic analysis of menstrual effluent, its associations with life course stress, and investigates the bioethics of the burgeoning field of menstrual biomarker research.
Luisa María Rivera PhD MPH 