Risa Lama-Luther

• Educational Background & Specialties
• Publications
• Activities
• Awards
• Courses

Educational Background & Specialties

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Educational Background

• B.A.: Anthropology, Macalester College, 2016
• M.A.: Biological Anthropology, University of Minnesota, 2021

Specialties

• paleoanthropology
• primate dietary ecology
• dental topographic analyses
• tooth wear
• human and primate evolution
• eastern Africa
• primate ecology and social beahvior
• inclusive science communication

Publications

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Publications

• Luther, R., Brown, M., Kufeyani, S., Maccarrell, T. (06/06/2023). Bare your teeth: How watching monkeys eat can teach us about our evolutionary origins & teach us about ourselves. SPARK eZine. (pp. 54-66). University of Minnesota Community of Scholars Program Graduate School Diversity Office.

Activities

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Activities

Outreach

• Bare your teeth: How watching monkeys eat can teach us about our evolutionary origins & teach us about ourselves: Science communication podcast outreach publication in the 2023 issue of the graduate-run e-zine SPARK. This two-part podcast brings together different strands of fieldwork experience as a biological anthropologist. Traveling to a national park in Uganda, the story provides a closeup look at a day-in-the-life in the rainforest following monkeys, to creating tooth molds of monkeys in national museums to better understand how our earliest ancestors lived. With humor and warnth, the story describes pivotal moments on this journey to graduate school and ways my intersectional identities show up in the spaces I move through.  Bare Your Teeth: How Watching Monkeys Eat Can Teach Us About Our Evolutionary Origins & Teach Us About Ourselves – SPARK (sparkezine.com). June 2023

Professional

• Origin Stories Podcast Interview: Interview given for the Leakey Foundation podcast Origin Stories about the top research in human origins for 2023. This episode covers, "Fossil discoveries and long-term primate studies [that] expanded our understanding of what makes us human." Origin Stories: Top Human Origins Discoveries of 2023 (libsyn.com). December 2023

Awards

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Awards

• National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, 2019-2023
• National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, Project Title: Relationships between diet and tooth wear in primate evolution
• The Leakey Foundation Research Grant, Project Title: Differential tooth wear among primate dietary categories
• University of Minnesota Thesis Research Travel Grant (International)

Courses

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Courses

• ANTH 1001 Human Evolution (Graduate Instructor)
• ANTH 3405/5405 Human Skeletal Analysis (Graduate Instructor)
• ANTH 1001 Human Evolution (Graduate Teaching Assistant)
• ANTH 3306 Medical Anthropology (Graduate Teaching Assistant)
• ANTH 3401/5401 Human Fossil Record (Graduate Teaching Assistant)
• ANTH 3980/5980 History of Human Health and Disease (Graduate Teaching Assistant)
• EEB/ANTH 4329: Primate Ecology and Social Behavior (Graduate Teaching Assistant)