Shahrina Chowdhury

Shahrina Chowdhury is an Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department at Brooklyn College's School of Natural and Behavioral Sciences. She is also affiliated with the CUNY Graduate Center Anthropology Program and the New York Consortium in Evolutionary Primatology (NYCEP). As co-director of the Filoha Hamadryas Project in Ethiopia, she contributes to long-term studies of complex primate societies.

• Education: B.A. in Environmental Studies (Ecology & Evolution) from University of Chicago (1998), M.A. in Conservation Biology from Columbia University (2004), M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology from CUNY Graduate Center (2014/2018)

Chowdhury's research examines the physiological basis of primate behavioral variation through hormonal analysis, focusing on stress responses and social bonding in chacma and hamadryas baboons. Her fieldwork investigates how environmental, social, and anthropogenic factors shape primate adaptation and survival strategies.

Her recent publications explore reproductive seasonality, glucocorticoid correlations with conception, aggression dynamics in primate societies, and environmental/anthropogenic stress impacts. These works contribute to understanding stress physiology, multilevel social systems, and behavioral adaptation across 12 distinct subfields including climatic variability, mating strategies, and social stability.

• Scientific Awards: Multiple PSC-CUNY grants (2020-2022), Leakey Foundation grant (2018), NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (2018)

Chowdhury serves on the Board of Advisors for the New York Academy of Sciences' Anthropology Section. Her work bridges biological anthropology, conservation biology, and evolutionary primatology, with practical applications for wildlife management and understanding human evolution.