The HSL is committed to training students and postdocs for positions inside and outside of academia, drawing on wide-ranging fields in the social sciences and sciences; to the well-being and flourishing of lab members; and to promoting a collaborative research environment that advances equity, diversity, and inclusion. See our lab commitments for more.
Penn State
Dr Anne Pisor; HSL director
Anne Pisor (“pie-zur”) is a social, behavioral, and ecological scientist doing interdisciplinary and intersectoral research to address 21st century problems. She focuses especially on the relationship between climate change, climate adaptation, and well-being, and on cooperation and natural resource management. Her basic-science-meets-applications work emerged from her ongoing research on the evolution of social relationships in humans, especially relationships spanning distance and intergroup relationships. Anne was recently named a Rising Star by the Human Behavior and Evolution Society as an early-career researcher “whose innovative work has already advanced the field.”
Anne is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Social Science Research Institute at Penn State University, where she is accepting PhD students interested in climate adaptation and health. You can watch a talk of hers for a taste of her academic approach.
Outside of academia, Anne is an entrepreneur and mentor with experience founding lean startups and managing academic spinoffs. The mission of her former climate tech startup, Fortifyd Inc., was to help households prepare for climate impacts before they happen. As a mentor, Anne encourages entrepreneurs to leverage social science and consider human factors in early-stage startups.
Washington State
Dr Kris Smith; HSL co-director
Kris Smith is a postdoc in the Human Sociality Lab and director of the Tanga Sociality and Fisheries Project in Tanzania. He studies how evolution and culture shape cooperative relationships, and how cooperative relationships can help achieve collective action, such as natural resource management. Prior to joining the Human Sociality Lab, Kris received his PhD in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2019 and stayed on for a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in the Social and Behavioral Science Initiative. During his time at Penn, he conducted field research with Hadza hunter-gatherers in Tanzania, studying how their decisions of whom to cooperate with are changing with increased integration with their neighbors.
Evan Leacox; PhD student
Evan’s interests lie in researching cultural adaptations to climate change - especially behavioral adaptations; their transmission within social networks; and their diffusion across disparate communities through a combination of cultural and evolutionary anthropology and collaborative, transdisciplinary research methods. Evan is particularly interested in how such behaviors and networks are influenced – informed or interrupted - by top-down approaches of donor-driven development interests and how, conversely, locally/culturally lead approaches to climate change related resiliency might better inform the process of developing and implementing global solutions. Evan is a trainee in WSU’s Rivers, Watersheds, and Communities program, where he has an NSF-funded graduate research fellowship.
Ollie Shannon; PhD student
Ollie Shannon is focused on queering evolutionary anthropology. They apply Queer theory in their work, while at the same time focusing on concrete evolutionary questions and seeking answers through the scientific process. They received their MA in Anthropology from Boise State University in 2021. Their thesis focused on understanding cultural impacts on health in the Queer community with special attention paid to rural Queer communities. For their dissertation work, they are doing field research in collaboration with Queer communities in the Northwest US, studying the impacts of chosen kin on child outcomes, parent outcomes, and the chosen kin themselves.