AABA 2025 Workshops and Training Opportunities
We have an exciting lineup of workshops, discussions, and training opportunities at #AABA2025! All workshops will be in person at the conference in Baltimore. Workshop locations, times, and registration forms are also listed in the online program and app.
Wednesday, March 12
Workshop: Building broader impact
A panel-led discussion on how to create a more impactful and effective broader impact plan for grant writing and project planning.
Organizers: Han Glavan and Mason Hintermeister
Wed, March 12, 9:00am-12:00pm, Laurel AB
COD Workshop: Empowering women leaders in biological anthropology
COD-WIN: This mentoring workshop empowers AABA women of all ranks to embrace their leadership roles by gaining essential leadership skills and connecting with peers and mentors for support.
This workshop aims to support and advance AABA women seeking leadership roles or currently performing them within the field of biological anthropology. Participants will develop critical leadership skills, gain insights on leadership styles and lessons learned from others experiences all within a supportive and collaborative environment to foster meaningful connections. This workshop is structured around a panel of women leaders, practical exercises, and engaging discussions addressing the unique challenges and opportunities women face in leadership positions across biological anthropology.
Organizers: Stephanie Poindexter and Megan Holmes
Wed, March 12, 1:00-4:00 pm, Laurel CD
Workshop: CSViewer for Analysts 2.0 – A follow-up workshop on upgraded integrative database and knowledge model for the Cayo Santiago Rhesus Macaques: structure, functionalities, applications, and broader impacts
This workshop provides hands-on experience in using “CSViewer for Analysts 2.0” to assess the Cayo Santiago Rhesus colony through contextualized analyses and visualizations.
The purpose of this workshop is to showcase the latest version of the CSViewer for Analysts, an integrative Database and Knowledge Model for the Cayo Santiago rhesus macaques. The Cayo Santiago (CS) Rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) colony, established in the Caribbean area in 1938, has been an important resource for biomedical, behavioral, and biological anthropological studies. The uniqueness of this colony and its derived skeletal collections lies in the preservation of associated demographic information including sex, age at death, birth date and death date, familial pedigree, and transportation history. The CSViewer for Analysts is one of principal outcomes of an NSF project integrating field census records and data collected from skeletons was first introduced during the 2024 American Association of Biological Anthropology Annual Meeting in Los Angeles (March 20, 2024) to showcase its contents and applications and collect feedback and a wish list from scientific and public communities. Researchers and researchers and high school STEM educators provided valuable input. In this follow-up workshop, we will reveal the upgraded database and associated tools, CSViewer for Analysts 2.0, with a demonstration of the structure, updated functionals in analytics and visualization. We will also demonstrate its applications not only in hypothesis-driven scientific investigations and lab practices using stepwise regression models for linear measurements, bone pathologies, and inbreeding profiles, but also its usefulness in scientific communications, STEM educations and beyond.
Organizer: Qian Wang
Wed, March 12, 1:00-5:00 pm, Kent C
Workshop: What happens to my grant proposal? A peek into the peer review process through mock review!
This workshop introduces young scholars to the merit review process through mock review exercises with experienced panelists and representatives from Leakey and Wenner Gren.
Have you ever wondered what really happens to your grant proposal once you send it off to a funding organization? Join us for a “mock review” workshop where you will learn about the merit review processes at the Leakey Foundation and Wenner Gren Foundation through hands-on evaluation of proposals. Heralded last year by one attendee as one of “the best things I’ve ever done at the AABA meetings,” you don’t want to miss this opportunity to see inside the black box of merit review. This half-day workshop, jointly sponsored by the AABA Professional Development Committee and the three funding organizations, introduces senior graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and junior faculty to merit review through mock review exercises, presentations, and discussions. Prior to the workshop, participants will consider past proposals provided by biological anthropology researchers and have the option to write reviews of one or more proposals. During the workshop, experienced panelists will join workshop participants in the mock review of proposals. Staff from the funding organizations will provide an overview of the merit review processes and lead group discussions based on the mock review experiences. Preregistration required using this form.
Wed, March 12, 1:00-5:00 pm, Laurel AB
Thursday, March 13
Workshop: Challenges in open science and data sharing in biological anthropology worldwide
We aim to explore and discuss the primary challenges of Open Science and data-sharing practices with a diverse pool of experts in biological anthropology.
We invited a diverse group of speakers who agreed on giving talks in the context of this workshop: Tadele Solomon (Heritage Research Ethiopian Heritage Authority, Ethiopia), Sahlelasie Melaku (Heritage Research Ethiopian Heritage Authority, Ethiopia), Constanza de la Fuente (University of Chile, Chile), Marien Beguelin (CONICET, Argentina), Michael Rivera (The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong), Patara Rattanachet (Mahidol University, Thailand). With this diverse pool of speakers, we aim to represent the perspectives on Open Science from individuals across various countries worldwide, as well as those with different specialisations within biological anthropology. The workshop is intended for biological anthropologists interested in discussing and learning about Open Science and data sharing within the field. We aim to engage participants at various career stages, from students to seasoned professionals. Additionally, we seek to include individuals in diverse roles, such as museum curators, journal editors, professors, researchers, consultants, and experts working in both governmental and private sectors.
RSVP using this form.
Organizers: Nicole Torres-Tamayo and Lumila Menéndez
Thurs, March 13, 2:30-6:00 pm, Salons I-II
COD-AACT: Workshop: Staying HIP: using high impact practices in teaching bioanthropology
The American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) maintains a list of 11 high-impact educational practices (HIPs) that have been shown to benefit college students from diverse backgrounds. HIPs include First-Year Seminars/Experiences, Writing-Intensive Courses, Collaborative Assignments and Projects, Undergraduate Research, ePortfolios, Service Learning/Community-Based Learning, and Capstone Courses/Projects. Our HIPs open house will offer participants the opportunity to drop in to learn more about specific HIPs and get ideas on how they can be implemented into their own classes. This workshop is offered by Anthropologists Outside of Anthropology Departments, Contingent and Teaching-Focused Faculty (AACT) Task Force, a sub-committee of the Committee on Diversity.
Organizers: Melissa Seaboch, Jessica Westin, Alexa Kelly, Liz Soluri
Thurs, March 13, 2:45-4:45 pm, Chasseur
Workshop: Biological anthropology is people: an art, culture, and science engagement exhibition
Celebrate the humanity in biological anthropology through an exhibition of art, culture, and creative engagement activities by and for AABA members.
Organizer: Rob O’Malley
Thursday, March 13, 4:30-7:00 pm, Harborside Ballroom
Workshop: Make learning magical: gamification in college level coursework
Gamification is a pedagogical tool that integrates game-like elements into an educational setting. This approach has been shown to increase student motivation, engagement, retention, participation, and facilitate increased learning overall in both online and traditional learning environments (Papp,2017; Lampropoulos and Sidiropoulos, 2024; Özturk and Korkmaz, 2020). Gamified learning has also been shown to benefit students’ mental health, attitudes, emotional intelligence, and encourage healthier lifestyles (Aschentrup et al., 2024; Navarro-Mateos et al., 2024; Özturk and Korkmaz, 2020).This workshop will invite bioanthropologists at all career stages to learn about strategies and technologies useful in course gamification. The primary goal is to provide exposure to and facilitate discussion of the applicability and equitable integration of gamification in college courses.
The session will begin with an introduction to course gamification strategies including storytelling, competition/challenges, and imaginative play (20 minutes). This will be followed by a demonstration of how programs like Canva and AI platforms can be useful when gamifying a course (25 Mins). The presentation portion will conclude with an open forum discussion of the ethical and equitable integration of gamified course elements (15 minutes). Following this, participants will work in groups to create an overarching gamified story for a course in biological anthropology and a gamified sample assignment (45 minutes). Participants will then share their gamified materials with the group (-15 minutes). The materials generated and disseminated at this workshop will then be shared online to create a community gamification repository for anthropologists.
The workshop will allow members unfamiliar with gamification to learn more about this pedagogical approach while experiencing the practicality platforms like Canva and AI bring to anthropological teaching. Participants will also benefit from free templates to use in the future and feedback from their peers on their gamified assignments.
Organizer: Alexandria Orozco
Thursday, March 13, 5:00-6:30 pm, Kent A-C
Friday, March 14
Workshop: Zombie ideologies in biological anthropology: confronting undead ideas around genetics, behavior, and race
Zombie ideologies, concepts that resist empirical refutation yet continue to shape scientific discourse, have a persistent influence on biological anthropology and the broader social sciences. These “undead” ideas, from race-based interpretations of genetics to misconceptions about the heritability of traits, phenotypic expressions, and health disparities, retain their grip on narratives surrounding genetics, behavior, and intelligence. This workshop critically explores how these concepts are continually revived in academic research, education, and public discourse, despite being challenged by evidence-based scholarship. Their persistence can be traced to educational gaps, media’s promotion of genetic determinism, and deeper historical and conceptual foundations within the field. The tradition of taxonomy and differentiation has historically influenced the teaching of genetics, often reinforcing essentialist views on race, ethnicity, and sex, leading to the misapplication of theoretical models and statistical methods. Such frameworks overlook the socio-political construction of concepts and inaccurately frames race and sex as strictly biological. Consequently, uncritical citation practices and disciplinary traditions create an “ecology of values” that perpetuate “just-so” evolutionary explanations within biological anthropology and beyond. The workshop engages participants through discussions and activities aimed at deconstructing these zombie ideologies and examining their presence in teaching practices, curricular design, and broader societal impact. By examining the historical contexts and biases within foundational genetic theories and reflecting on how our teaching practices influence students’ scientific understanding, we aim to develop strategies for challenging and correcting these persistent ideologies in the classroom. Participants will work together to find ways to address and challenge the problematic legacies of essentialist thinking within genetics education. By the end of the workshop, they will gain practical tools and insights to foster a more equitable, accurate, and thoughtful approach to teaching genetics, behavior, and race. The workshop invites diverse perspectives to collaboratively reframe and dismantle these enduring misconceptions in the classroom.
Organizers: Ulises J. Espinoza and Agustín Fuentes
Friday, March 14, 8:00-10:00 am, Kent A-C
Workshop: Disabled and neurodivergent community, perspectives, and identity in biological anthropology
Disabled and neurodivergent people represent over 1 billion individuals worldwide, and comprise the largest intersectional minoritized group in the United States. Additionally, rates of disability and neurodivergent recognition and diagnosis have expanded in recent years, creating a need for awareness and community-building around these identities. We recognize that it is crucial for both our classrooms and our biological anthropology communities at large to acknowledge these diverse identities, and to strive to become more inclusive in our academic spaces. We invite contributors and audience participants of all backgrounds to learn, lead, and celebrate disability and neurodivergence as core to our fields as well as our collective and intersectional science identities. Disabled and neurodivergent perspectives are inextricably linked to the work we do as biological anthropologists, and to our lived experiences as human beings. As members of a set of marginalized and medicalized identities, we will lead a short workshop which highlights how disability and neurodivergence informs our research, our lived perspectives, and the place these perspectives deserve in our scientific communities. In doing so, we bring together biological anthropology, critical disability theory, and disability rights disciplines to catalyze new research and broadcast neurodivergent and disabled identity in our field.
We are excited to host a 1.5 hour workshop at AABA 2025 on Disabled and Neurodivergent Community, Perspectives, and Identity in Biological Anthropology, and we hope you will join us in the discussion. You do not have to identify as disabled to attend this meeting, and all are welcome. Please fill out this quick form to provide us with more information and to help us plan our workshop.
Organizer: Taormina Lepore
Friday, March 14, 10:30am-12:00pm, Kent A-C
Workshop: Submitting and reviewing for the AABA Journal
We plan to review the aims and scope of the AJBA and discuss the ways manuscripts can be fashioned so that they have the greatest chance of being published in the journal. We will also discuss the review process and provide information for new and seasoned reviewers on what makes a good review. We will also discuss the ways in which reviews can be equitable and inclusive. Members of the AJBA editorial board are invited to attend and provide their perspective. This is a chance for attendees to obtain a greater grasp on the workings of the journal, article submission and the review process.
Organizers: Trudy Turner and Sheela Athreya
Friday, March 14, 2:00-3:30 PM, Kent A-C
Workshop: Indigenous knowledge and evolutionary science: bridging knowledge systems in biological anthropology
This workshop brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars to ask how Indigenous knowledge and epistemologies can inform evolutionary theory and practice alongside Western traditions.
This workshop will explore Indigenous epistemologies as dynamic, complementary contributions to evolutionary theory. Integrating Indigenous perspectives with academic approaches in biological anthropology, we aim to deepen the field’s understanding of knowledge systems in evolution, ecology, and biodiversity. This workshop will bring together Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars to discuss roles that Indigenous knowledge might play in transforming our understanding of both human and non-human evolution. While many themes are likely to emerge in this discussion, we initially propose three themes for discussion:
1. Embodiment in Knowledge Systems
Indigenous knowledge often emphasizes embodied, skill-based learning. We will explore how Indigenous practices, such as land stewardship and kin-making through communal resource management, align with principles of ecological adaptation and niche construction.
2. Relational Knowledge and Evolutionary Networks
Indigenous perspectives regard knowledge as relational, connecting humans, flora, fauna, and environmental elements. This view broadens our understanding of “ecological inheritance,” species co-evolution, and plant ethology, inviting reflection on humanity’s role within these biological networks, and perhaps altering our understanding of humanity’s kinship with the rest of nature.
3. Ethics and Epistemic Responsibility
Indigenous approaches emphasize the ethical dimensions of knowledge, embedding responsibilities toward the environment and community. We’ll discuss how these perspectives can shape ethical research practices and sustainable policy, encouraging evolutionary scientists to reflect on the ethical aspects of their work.
The session will begin with a panel discussion by invited scholars who will present ideas about how Indigenous knowledge can inform evolutionary science, focusing on case studies for group consideration and discussion. This will be followed by an open discussion with all workshop participants, followed by breakout groups with panelists to consider specific case studies. Through these discussions, participants will engage directly with Indigenous approaches to knowledge as they relate to evolutionary biology, fostering dialogue that respects cultural integrity and scientific inquiry.
Organizers: Clark Barrett and Cesar Berreras
Friday, March 14, 4:00-6:00 pm, Kent A-C
Saturday, March 15
Workshop: Is it rare? Make it F.A.I.R.! Hands-on workshop on cooperative research approaches to the study of ancient rare diseases
Are you interested in gaining first-hand experience in trailblazing research on rare diseases in the past? Join our workshop and the research network striving to shed light on this forgotten part of our past.
Rare diseases affect today about 400 million people all over the world and, although their definition varies from country to country, of the about 8000 conditions recognized as rare almost half affect the skeletal system and could potentially be detected in archaeological human remains.
The challenges posed by the complex nature of these diseases, as well as by their scarce and fragmented evidence, can only be tackled by a cooperative research effort, encouraging and supporting knowledge- and data-sharing.
The Digital Atlas of Ancient Rare Diseases (DAARD), developed by our team at the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin, is an open, collaborative resource for collecting, mapping and querying data for the study of rare diseases in the past.
This workshop offers an introductory course to the DAARD, providing first-hand experience on how to feed, access and reuse data from all over the world and from all different historic periods.
Share your cases with us, if you would like it, or just join us to test all the resources offered by the DAARD to visualize data correlations, through graphs and maps.
Contribute to the community effort to address global research questions and explore new research avenues for the study of rare diseases in the past.
Please RSVP using THIS FORM.
Organizers: Emmanuele Petiti and Julia Gresky
Saturday, March 15, 8:00-9:30 AM, Kent A-C
Workshop: Teaching about race, racism, and human variation: video and related teaching resources
This workshop will showcase videos and related resources on the topics of race, racism, and human diversity from HHMI BioInteractive, AAAS DoSER, PBS, and Baltimore-based documentary filmmaker and DEI consultant, J.C. Faulk. It will include experts from HHMI and AAAS to present their videos and resources and AABA member Tina Lasisi to present the PBS videos and resources. An AABA Education Committee Member and J.C. Faulk will facilitate a discussion of the opportunities and challenges for teaching about these topics in K-16 classrooms. Part of that discussion will be presenting a list of additional resources on these topics, and participants will be welcome to contribute to that list during the workshop. The final resource list will be provided to the workshop participants after the conference, and the end goal is to add them to the Education Committee section on the AABA website: https://bioanth.org/about/education/.
Organizers: An AABA Education Committee Member and J.C. Faulk
Saturday, March 15, 9:00-11:00 AM, Dover AB
Workshop: Tracing Forgotten Histories: Identifying Unprovenienced Human Skeletal Remains and Establishing Best Practices for their Ethical Treatment
The availability of provenance and provenience data necessary to connect skeletal remains to specific descendant communities is inconsistent across skeletal collections, particularly those housed in higher education teaching laboratories. Many such collections originate from 19th- and 20th-century excavations, research, or “donations.” Extended curation periods and repeated use in teaching have often resulted in the loss or absence of critical provenience data. This lack of documentation has left faculty, students, and the remains themselves in a state of uncertainty regarding their appropriate disposition, including repatriation, reburial, or continued use in education.
This two-part workshop will first feature panelists sharing their experiences in working with and identifying unprovenienced human remains, along with their perspectives on establishing ethical stewardship in these challenging cases. To provide participants with actionable strategies for addressing issues within their own institutions, the workshop will emphasize human skeletal remains in teaching or museum collections for which panelists have successfully traced provenience data. Following the panelists’ presentations, an open discussion will allow attendees to ask questions and learn about ethical teaching practices, handling remains when consent can never be attained, and collaborating with university and museum administrators, faculty, and students who have a vested interest in the ethical treatment of human remains.
The second part of the workshop will introduce multidisciplinary methodologies that combine osteological analysis with provenance research to reconstruct the histories of unprovenanced human remains. This approach integrates traditional osteological analysis with less conventional methods, including institutional archive research, handwriting analysis, identifying idiosyncrasies of anatomical supply companies, taphonomy, and comparative data. Participants will also be invited to share their own tools and successes.
By sharing these methods and case studies, we aim to inspire researchers and institutions facing similar challenges to think beyond traditional frameworks in biological anthropology and collections research. Ultimately, we seek to contribute to a more ethical and informed stewardship of human remains.
Organizers: Alyson Caine, Karen Weinstein, Irene Hochgraf-Cameron
Saturday, March 15, 2:00-6:30 PM, Salons I-II