Elizabeth Nelson

Elizabeth A. Nelson (Turtle Mountain Band Chippewa) (she/her) is a postdoctoral Research Assistant in the Microbial Paleogenomics Unit, Department of Genomes and Genetics, Institut Pasteur in Paris, France. She was awarded her Doctorate (Dr. rer. Nat.) in the subject of Archaeological Science and Human Evolution from the Eberhard Karls University of Tubingen with the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Germany. Her scholarship and research cover bioarchaeology, paleopathology, and pathogen genomics. As a biological anthropologist, Dr. Nelson employs a synergistic approach incorporating socio-
political, environmental, demographic, and genomic data to examine patterns of pathogen evolution within their biocultural and environmental contexts. Her primary work investigates tuberculosis in ancient, historic, and modern contexts of the Americas to evaluate the impact of colonialism and the consequences of structural violence on the evolution of the pathogen and disease demographics today. Through active participation and co-production with community members, she seeks to employ ancient DNA as a tool to reconstruct the past with Indigenous perspectives. She also contributes to studies of other infectious diseases from ancient, historic, and modern contexts of the Americas, environmental microbes, and the evolution of pathogens infecting non-human hosts.