Rate My Professor Meredith Ellis

Meredith A. B. Ellis, Ph.D., serves as Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Florida Atlantic University. She earned her PhD in Anthropology with Distinction from Syracuse University in 2014, receiving the Syracuse University All-University Doctoral Prize in 2015. Additional degrees include an MA in Anthropology from Syracuse University (2011), an MA in English from the University of Rochester (2005), and a BA in Anthropology and English from William Smith College (2004), where she graduated summa cum laude with honors in Anthropology and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. As a faculty affiliate of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Initiative and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Ellis teaches courses such as Research Methods in Bioarchaeology, Human Variation, Forensic Anthropology, Human Evolution, and the Anthropology of Death.

Ellis's research centers on social bioarchaeology, bioarchaeology of childhood, and historical bioarchaeology in the 19th century United States. She analyzes human skeletal remains from archaeological sites to explore nutrition, disease, trauma, social relationships, family dynamics, and daily lives shaped by environmental and social conditions. Notable projects encompass subadult remains from the Spring Street Presbyterian Church in Lower Manhattan, bone processing indicative of starvation at the Donner Party camp in California and a Chinese mining camp in Montana, and skeletal analysis related to the 1928 Lake Okeechobee Hurricane, including a forthcoming book on identity, landscape, and memory in disaster contexts. She also contributes to NAGPRA compliance efforts and interdisciplinary collaborations across biological anthropology, archaeology, and history. Key publications include the monograph The Children of Spring Street: The Bioarchaeology of Childhood in a 19th Century Abolitionist Congregation (Springer, 2019); co-edited volume Nineteenth Century Childhoods in Interdisciplinary and International Perspectives (Oxbow Books, 2018); peer-reviewed articles such as "Weathered Remains: Bioarchaeology, Identity, and the Landscape" (American Anthropologist, 2023), "Still Life: A Bioarchaeological Portrait of Perinatal Remains Buried at the Spring Street Presbyterian Church" (Historical Archaeology, 2020), "Presence and Absence: An Exploration of Scurvy in the Commingled Subadults in the Spring Street Presbyterian Church Collection" (International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 2016), and "The Signature of Starvation" (Historical Archaeology, 2011); and book chapters like "Childhoods in Bioarchaeology: The Importance of Categorizing and Analyzing Age" (Springer, 2024).