Brooke A. Scelza (Principal Investigator)
I am a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at UCLA. I received my PhD in Biocultural Anthropology from the University of Washington in 2008. My dissertation work was with the Martu in Western Australia. There I studied parental investment as children were making the transition to adulthood.
In 2009 I shifted my fieldwork to Namibia, where I began working with the Himba. My work there focuses on two main topics, the importance of mother-adult daughter relationships, and the role of "multiple mating" in men's and women's reproductive and parenting decisions. |
Major Collaborators

Sean Prall, PhD
Assistant Professor, UCLA Department of Anthropology
Dr. Prall is a co-Director of the Kunene Rural Health and Demograhy Project, of which he has been a part since 2016. He received his PhD from the Indiana University in 2014. He brings to the project expertise in reproductive endocrinology and experience collecting physiological and behavioral data. He leads our current NSF-funded project on vaccine decision-making in Namibian communities across a rural to urban spectrum.
Graduate Students

Kasey Schleper (Current PhD student) Interests: birth, pregnancy and postpartum support

Renee Hagen (PhD, 2023) Interests: cultural evolution, reproductive decision-making and human behavioral ecology).

Sally Li (MA, 2023) Interests: life history theory, fertility and parental investment