Kristen Broehl-DrokeAssistant Teaching Professor

• PhD, Anthropology, University of Nevada, Reno, 2023
• MA, Anthropology, California State University, Chico, 2018
• BA, Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2014

I am a biological anthropologist with a strong interest in teaching. I love to share my passion for anthropology with students and show how it is relevant to our everyday lives. Additionally, I am interested in increasing diversity, equity, and justice within academia and beyond.

For research, my foci are in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology. Within bioarchaeology, I am interested in using biological distance (biodistance) analysis of dental and skeletal remains in California to evaluate the relationship between biological and cultural affinity in past populations. For example, might similar mortuary practices between individuals at a site indicate biological kinship? Are culture changes related to migration? My dissertation explored such questions at a precolonial site in the San Francisco Bay Area with permission of descendant groups. Within forensic anthropology, I am interested in validating or developing methods for estimating the biological profile from unidentified skeletal remains when the most diagnostic features are absent (e.g., using the teeth or bones of the hands and feet). I have assisted with casework in several states, such as search and recovery of remains from victims of the Camp Fire wildfire in Paradise, CA in 2018.