Andrea Wiley

Andrea Wiley is Provost Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington, a core faculty member in the Department of Anthropology and an affiliate of the Human Biology Program. She earned her Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1992, an M.A. in Demography and Anthropology from UC Berkeley in 1986, and a B.A. cum laude in Biological Bases of Behavior from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984. Her career at Indiana University Bloomington encompasses significant contributions to anthropological scholarship. In December 2024, she was appointed Provost Professor by the IU Board of Trustees. She holds the distinction of being a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and is currently on leave for the 2024-25 academic year.

Wiley employs biocultural and evolutionary perspectives to study human diet, nutrition, health, demography, and social behavior. Her research explores biological normalcy—the relationship between population biology and cultural ideas of normal human variation—and its implications for health and well-being. She investigates milk consumption's biological effects on child growth, menarche, insulin-like growth factor I, and life history parameters in the United States and India. Earlier work examined maternal-infant health, infant mortality, and attachment in high-altitude Himalayan populations, considering ecological, historical, and socio-cultural influences. Key publications include the textbook Medical Anthropology: A Biocultural Perspective (4th edition, Oxford University Press, 2021, co-authored with John S. Allen); Cultures of Milk: The Biology and Culture of Dairy Consumption in India and the United States (Harvard University Press, 2014); Re-imagining Milk (2nd edition, Routledge, 2016); An Ecology of High-Altitude Infancy: A Biocultural Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2004); "Biological Normalcy" (Annual Review of Anthropology, 2023); and the Pearl Lecture "Biological Normalcy: A new framework for biocultural analysis of human population variation" (American Journal of Human Biology, 2021). Her work has shaped nutritional anthropology and biocultural theory.

Professional Email: wileya@iu.edu