Hi, I’m Dr. Taylor van Doren (she/her)! I am a biocultural anthropological pandemic researcher with strong interests in social inequalities, demography, and population health as they pertain to pandemic events. I have written a lot about anthropology and pandemics, and my papers have appeared in Evolutionary Anthropology, American Journal of Biological Anthropology, American Journal of Public Health, Social Science & Medicine, and more.
I am currently an NSF OPP Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alaska Anchorage in the Institute of Circumpolar Health Studies. During this fellowship, I am studying the demographic, epidemiological, and social consequences of the 1918 influenza pandemic in Alaska using historical vital records, death records, and archival data.
From 2022-23, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Sitka Sound Science Center in Sitka, Alaska, where I studied COVID-19 impacts and resilience in rural Southeast Alaska communities with the funding of an NSF RAPID grant. This research is currently expanding to include quantitative and qualitative analyses of delayed care and its determinants to better understand the indirect population health impacts of COVID-19.
My dissertation was funded by a NSF DDRIG through both the Biological & Cultural Anthropology programs and the Raymond White Dissertation Writing Fellowship at the University of Missouri. In 2021, I was an American Journal of Public Health Think Tank Fellow.
The photo of me at the top of this page was taken at Lepramuseet St. Jørgens Hospital in Bergen, Norway, which is the famous (and quite lovely) leprosy hospital run by Dr. Gerhard Armauer Hansen, for whom the disease is now named (Hansen’s disease).
Taylor van Doren, PhD 