معرفی
Mary Shenk is an Associate Professor of Anthropology, Demography, and Asian Studies at The Pennsylvania State University, affiliated with the College of the Liberal Arts. She holds additional roles as a Faculty Associate at the Population Research Institute and a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Human Ecology. Her research integrates cultural anthropology, human behavioral ecology, and demography to study marriage, kinship, fertility, mortality, and social inequality. Her fieldwork has focused on South India, Bangladesh, and China, examining topics such as marriage economics, fertility decline, and the impact of market integration on wealth and health.
- Education: Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Washington (2005).
- Research Themes: Evolution of inequality, evolutionary demography of fertility, kinship systems, and religion’s role in reproductive outcomes.
Her work is funded by the NSF, NIH, and Templeton Foundation. She leads a research group involving graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, addressing topics like marital assortment by wealth and the psychological mechanisms of human reproduction. Her studies often use cross-cultural and longitudinal data to explore how environmental and economic factors shape human behavior and demographics.
- Grants & Funding: NSF, NIH, Templeton Foundation.
- Lab/Team: Shenk Research Group at Penn State, focusing on biocultural approaches to human behavior.
