Research Interests

• Paleoecology

Bio

Amy Rector has been a member of the anthropology faculty at the VCU School of World Studies since 2011. After completing her undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia, Amy continued her graduate studies at Arizona State University, and earned her Ph.D. in 2010. Her primary research includes reconstructing paleoecological contexts for early human evolution in eastern and southern Africa, as well as identifying and analyzing fossil mammal communities to characterize their biogeographic and ecological affinities through space and time. Working with the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State, Amy has been involved in field work in South Africa, Ethiopia and Morocco, and continues to take a VCU study abroad class to South Africa every summer. She currently teaches Introduction to Anthropology, Human Evolution, Human Osteology, Primatology, and other biological anthropology courses for VCU, is a member of the executive committee of the Physical Anthropology Women’s Mentoring Network (an affiliation of the American Association of Physical Anthropology), and hosts the Mid-Atlantic Bioanthropology Interest Group annual meeting every fall at VCU.