Culture, Health, and Environment Lab (CHELab)

It takes a large, talented, dedicated team to do what we do. Our Culture, Health, and Environment Lab (CHELab) on the Tempe campus is where we come together to push forward an array of collaborative research projects. Our basic philosophy: work together to create a tide that raises all boats.

The CHELab is dedicated to research using and student training in rigorous, cutting-edge ethnographic and biocultural research methods. Our PhD students become experts, and end up with great jobs because of it. Up to 35 in-person and online undergraduates join the lab during semesters as research apprentices, gaining data management, analysis, and collaborative skills. Many more work with us in the field or in practicum courses learning about social science data collection by doing. In the summer, we are mostly off collecting data that we then spend the rest of the year cleaning and analyzing.

The core CHEL team is four faculty in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change who have collaborated intensely for many years (from left to right): Linguistic anthropologist Cindi SturtzSreetharan, educational anthropologist Alissa Ruth, biocultural/biological anthropologist Alexandra Brewis, and cultural anthropologist Amber Wutich. We embrace team-collaboration, work efficiently, hold each other to the highest standards, innovate our approaches constantly, and value what everyone brings to the table.

We welcome scholars, postdocs, and students from any field to get involved in any of our ongoing projects. We have space for longer-term visitors, if you have a sabbatical upcoming! Contact any of us to find out more.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•