Catalina I. Fernández, PhD (she/her)

New in the saga of our causal model of human growth 🚼🧬📈at AJBA: can we reconstruct growth trajectories when kids’ ages are uncertain & all we have is cross-sectional data? Turns out, YES! 🎉 Accurate estimates, with exciting (?!) implications for bioarchaeology and beyond. doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.70358

🙂 New paper from our lab on why some men choose to counter patriarchal norms in Tanzania. We used a mixed-methods "positive deviance" approach, interviewing outliers to explore why some become exceptionally supportive of women while most don't. bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/gsc/gsc/view...

If our votes didn't matter, they wouldn't work so hard to suppress them or spend so much to buy them. #VOTE

🔥💀🔥 50'000 climate deaths in Europe 🔥💀🔥 Media coverage is highlighting Italy, correctly, but proportional to population, Switzerland is number 3 in Europe. Above Spain and France. Central-Eastern countries Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria all in top 10.

Sadly, the social science backs this account very well - and has done for decades - men too often bring out the worst in each other to demonstrate/protect their fragile masculinity. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/20/o...

A new preprint, co-authored with a great group of collaborators who joined us in Aarhus almost a year ago: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Most people know that losing sleep makes it harder to think clearly, but this new research paper from #JRSocInterface shows that it also changes the way we walk doi.org/10.1098/rsif... | #Biomechanics #BiomedicalEngineering

a-z-animals.com/blog/some-ch...

The latest from the lab! What we can learn about urbanization from gut microbes from diverse communities around South Asia: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Microplastics: research and commentary I've been collecting items on microplastics, for which research is finding increasing evidence for harm to human and environmental health.  Here are some relatively recent examples of what's out there on this topic. Should we be worried about microplastics?  …

“No educator would require students to smoke cigarettes to learn about nicotine’s ill effects on their health…If the medium is the message, then using generative AI in a course on climate change or sustainability might end up teaching the wrong lesson.” —Debra J. Rosenthal

We are recruiting for a PhD student who will be studying jointly between Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and University of St Andrews, More information are attached. @phrg-standrews.bsky.social @cpc-cg.bsky.social @bspsuk.bsky.social

The Shuar Health & Life History Project Special Issue (Edited by Sam Urlacher @ssurlacher.bsky.social, Theresa Gildner, & Larry Sugiyama) is complete! This important SI features 11 papers highlighting 20+ years of research with the Indigenous Shuar of Ecuador. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...

Full cringe here but also proud of the work that we have done with my colleagues, John Bunce and Caissa Revilla-Minaya now at @amnh.org #childgrowth #anthropology #bioanth #antropologia #growhtmodel #FAU

The largest and most diverse collection of Indigenous American genomes 👉🏻 “The evolutionary history and unique genetic diversity of Indigenous Americans” @macscastro.bsky.social @hunemeier.bsky.social @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social @jrockdrigo.bsky.social 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A reminder, on the day following another mass shooting: it's a gun problem, and it's a masculinity problem. Framing instances of gun violence largely as a domestic issue or a mental health issue ignores these glaring truths. wapo.st/3QQEH6Y

It was a pleasure to join my co-author of Food Intelligence @juliabelluz.bsky.social as a guest on the #AmericanDish podcast hosted by food policy journalist @hbottemiller.bsky.social youtu.be/flBGxRoKXvc?...

🚨 4-year PhD 🚨 Study how disgust 🤢 shapes food avoidance 🙅 & immune responses 🩸 through VR 🎮 + lab exp + psychophysiology with @csarabian.bsky.social, Marie Charpentier (@mandrillusproject.bsky.social) & me ⏳ Oct 2026 | ⚠️ Deadline May 20 📍 Univ Montpellier 🇫🇷 --> euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/422430

"The team’s analyses revealed that, eight years after the arrival of their first child, women were 29% less likely to be employed at a university than if they had not become mothers" www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The evidence is overwhelming - COVID vaccines #ProtectYouBoth!! True then, true now - equitable, community centered outreach makes a difference in helping pregnant & lactating folks get vaccinated.

New research lead by @marcela-pfaff-nash.bsky.social shows children living in low-resource, rural settings experience intestinal challenges that can persist well beyond early childhood, highlighting the role of globally varying intestinal function for childhood health and development.

Of course this administration, which loves to talk a big game on "health," is trying to protect a pesticide company from legal accountability.

How to explain glyphosate hypocrisy? Bayer’s lobbying and revolving door Here's one place where the MAHA and Food Justice movements agree: on glyphosate.  Here is a post from thefoodbabe (@Vani Hari): LOBBYING This refers to U.S. Right to Know's Bayer lobby tracker. Federal disclosures show Bayer…

Come work with us! And get in touch with any questions you might have about the position, our labs or living/working in Germany #PostdocWanted

🤩PREPRINT OUT! Using our causal model of 👫 growth, we test if model can estimate growth trajectories of pops. of 🚸 of uncertain age using cross-sectional data. Results: our model provide accurate estimates providing a solution for bioarcheological and other contexts! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

It's not an exaggeration to say this will result in genocidal-scale death. And I don't mean in the distant, speculative future. Just the tens of thousands of pollution deaths in the relative near-term (Free link.) www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/c...

How to turn off Gmail's AI "summaries" while retaining the helpful inbox category tabs--finally!

"It's less harmful to me to make sure that they can do the things without the AI than to try and push the AI into my classroom knowing that, at least for some of them, it's going to mean that they don't get to acquire the skills that they need." This this this this this this this this this this 🙏

1 in 200 #polio infections leads to irreversible paralysis. In the 1960s children suffering from irreversible paralysis caused by polio were required to use 'iron lungs' to help them breathe. We don't see these 'iron lungs' anymore today because #VaccinesWork

The MAHA Dietary Guidelines I: Personal Responsibility vs. Public Health Policy This is the first of a series of posts I will be writing about the new Dietary Guidelines for America, 2025-2030 Yesterday, I gave an overview of the guidelines, finding them cheerful, but muddled, contradictory,…

Next week, we welcome @rebeccasear.bsky.social in our Lecture Series. Rebecca will talk about 21st century eugenics, scientific racism and the role of academia in promoting political ideology. Just register here to participate 👉 rotorub.wordpress.com/roto-lecture... #PhilSci #HPBio

EHBEA awarded a workshop grant this year to researchers aiming to strengthen evolutionary approaches to the study of behaviour in Chile & elsewhere in Latin America, as we're keen to use these awards for outreach beyond our usual community. Congrats to the organisers, & hope the workshop goes well 😊

📉 Many countries are seeing falling birth rates—but can rising gender equality reverse the trend? A new study from our centre revisits a major debate in demography and finds a modest fertility rebound at high levels of gender equality. www.demography.ox.ac.uk/news/new-stu...

“All I can say is ‘Wake up, America. This administration wants to take your vaccines away from you. And they’re on a path to do that,’” Michael Osterholm, director of @cidrap.bsky.social www.statnews.com/2025/11/20/c...

No se pierda este 10 de diciembre de 2025 el workshop en Evolución Biocultural! Estaremos hablando de salud, comportamiento y evolución! 🤓 Link de inscripción aquí 👇 tr.ee/ytgK8OIO7V

@catferna.bsky.social @ehbea.bsky.social

🚨 PUBLICATION ALERT 🚨 Happy to share a comment, together with Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, on the need of formal models and a developmental perspective to really understand the relationship between environmental uncertainty and the reproductive behaviour of humans 🤓😉 doi.org/10.1017/S014...

Lead is leaching into the environment and lurking in our homes. It's in soil, in water, in food, in our housing. And it's poisoning people. The first episode of Untold: Toxic Legacy launches October 22. Trailer here: open.spotify.com/episode/6M4H...

It is hard to overstate the stress produced by the incoherence of academic institutions pumping generative AI when they want to play business and then leaving instructors to deal with the results when they want to play school

Childcare is a public good. The return on investment is high (and VERY well-documented). It benefits children, mothers, families, businesses, and the economy. The lack of a robust childcare infrastructure is a choice the U.S. has made. We could make a different one. www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/...

ICYMI Notre Dame Anthropology will be hiring a post-doc for 2026-2028. This is part of a university-wide initiative to support early career scholars. Deadline is Oct. 31...sorry for late notice. apply.interfolio.com/171503