The Stress, Adaptation and Resiliency (STAR) team conducts biocultural research addressing how stress, resilience and other social determinants of health “get under the skin” via experiential and physiological pathways. One aim of this work is to understand gender and sex-based social experiences and embodied marginalization in order to reduce negative health outcomes among those most vulnerable to social stress effects. Research in this area includes mixed-methods studies of transgender experience and health integrating biomarkers of stress and health with in-person interviews and ethnographic methods. The team also contributes to methodological developments to facilitate the integration of biomarker measures in work among vulnerable populations.
Learn more about the PhD students in the STAR lab below.
Tian Walker, MS. Tian (she/her) is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology. She did her undergrad at California State University of Long Beach where she graduated with a degree in Anthropology. She was a BUILD (Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity) scholar and was therefore funded by the National Institutes of Health to act as a research assistant during her last two years of undergrad. She is trained in biomarker collection and semi-structured interviewing. She embraces methodologies from both the biological and cultural subfields of anthropology. She works with Dr. Zachary DuBois in his STAR (stress, adaptation, resilience) lab and is also very engaged with the local type 1 diabetes community.
Kelsi Kuehn, MA. Kelsi (they/them) is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology. Kelsi’s current research is focused on understanding how chronic stress related to queer identity becomes embodied within the skeleton. Kelsi is also working with Dr. L. Zachary DuBois and his STAR Lab to examine transgender health and resilience from a biocultural perspective. Previously, Kelsi completed a Master of Arts in Applied Anthropology at the University of South Florida. There they studied the application of an elemental analysis technique called Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) within the fields of forensic anthropology and bioarchaeology, for the purpose of discriminating individuals from one another using the unique elemental profiles within their skeletons.
Dee Jolly, MS. Dee (they/them) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Anthropology. Dee’s research interests broadly include embodied inequities and stress, intersectionality, chronic pain, substance usage, and transgender health. Their dissertation research uses an intersectionality framework to explore how lived experiences of stress and stigma become embodied in the form of chronic pain among transgender people of color. Dee’s research has been supported by the Department of Anthropology and the Center for the Study of Women in Society at the University of Oregon and has been published in journals such as Journal of Adolescent Health, Annals of Surgery, and Sexual Medicine among others. Dee was a 2022 National Science Foundation Cultural Anthropology Methods Program (NSF CAMP) Fellow, where they were trained in advanced cultural anthropology methods. Dee has also been trained in best practices for intersectional health research through the 2023 Intersectionality Training Institute’s Intersectionality Summer Intensive program. Prior to coming to UO, Dee worked as a clinical research manager at the Center for Gender Surgery at Boston Children’s Hospital where they studied outcomes of gender-affirming medical and surgical care. Dee previously earned their M.S. in Medical Anthropology and Cross-Cultural Practice from Boston University School of Medicine in 2018, where they studied the healthcare experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals of color through an intersectional framework. Dee additionally holds a B.A. in Anthropology and B.S. in Psychology with an emphasis in Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Florida.