Adam Netzer Zimmer

Critical Race Theory, biocultural anthropology, bioarchaeology of anatomical collections, Queer Science, public science outreach & communication, history of medicine, Iceland & Nordic Studies

I am a Ph.D. candidate working in the UMass Community Archaeology Laboratory under the supervision of Dr. Whitney Battle-Baptiste. My research is at the intersections of identity, policy, violence, and health through the lenses of bioarchaeology, forensic anthropology, and medical anthropology. This work, which is based primarily in Reykjavík, Iceland, has been funded by the Fulbright-National Science Foundation Arctic Research Grant, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the Leifur Eiríksson Foundation fellowship, and the Armelagos-Swedlund Dissertation Writing Award. My dissertation research looks at human cadaver recruitment in medical institutions, focusing on the rise of race-based anatomical science in 19th and early 20th century Iceland and the United States. I'm also very interested in queer and feminist perspectives in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology, particularly focusing on the history of science. As part of this work, I conduct a lot of public science outreach and am a SAPIENS Public Scholars Fellow through the Wenner-Gren Foundation for the 2022-2023 academic year. In collaboration with fellow UMass graduate student Priscilla Mollard, I am also part of the Rivulus Dominarum Transylvanian Bioarchaeology Project. I am co-Primary Director of the project and have a special interest in the analysis of a mass grave associated with the Piaţa Cetăţii skeletal collection.

• 2023 (in press) - Stone, P.K., Zimmer, A.N. "Chapter 27: Issues of gender, identity, and agency in paleopathology”. In The Routledge Handbook of Paleopathology, ed. Anne Grauer. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.
• 2019 - Zimmer, A.N. “The Era of the Body Snatchers”. Scientific American. June 5, 2019. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/era-of-the-body-snatchers/
• 2018 - Zimmer, A.N. “More than the sum total of their parts: Restoring identity by recombining a skeletal collection with its texts”. In Bioarchaeological Analyses and Bodies: New ways of knowing anatomical and skeletal collections, ed. Pamela Stone. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.

present - Ph.D.; Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst | 2016: M.A.: Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst | 2013: B.A.: Anthropology and Music (voice); Ithaca College

Talk at National Museum of Iceland - video

Interview: "500 Queer Scientists Speak Up About STEM Inclusivity"

Rivulus Dominarum Bioarchaeology Project

ResearchGate