Anne Pisor
@annepisor
Faculty (Penn State), lab director (), entrepreneur. Interdisciplinary anthropologist studying how people cooperate to manage risk. Foodie. 🌎🌍
The estimated effects for other kinds of drought patterning are mixed. While more spatially extensive droughts predict remittances in Nigeria, for example – consistent with our predictions about long-distance sharing – extensive droughts predict less use of remittances in the other countries. 6/
Our team wanted to know whether patterning in climate events is associated with households receiving remittances, suggesting that households are using the traditional strategy of sharing resources across space. We looked at publicly available climate and household data from six African countries. 4/
Experiencing widespread or back-to-back climate events could affect decisions in your household, or in households you serve or study. In a new paper in Climatic Change, we explore whether different characteristics of drought predict whether labor migrants send home money. 🧵👇🏻 1/
We know that sometimes we remember the worst days. To understand the minute-to-minute effects of heat on health, we just completed a follow-up study, with real-time data on how heat may affect movement and physical and mental health in this community. 3/4
New paper alert: How were Kenyan herders affected by the worst drought in 40 years? Health impacts were universal. Whether herders searched for pasture with their animals or stayed close to home, everyone remembers experiencing headaches, stress, and hopelessness. 1/4
When you study humans for a living and your kiddo's first M1 molar erupts and you're like "oh my god 😭 you're not in early childhood anymore!" 🧪 #anthropology #humanbiology #evolution #primates #demography
I'm excited for what comes next for this cross-sector, cross-disciplinary collection of collaborators - for understanding rural transitions like the ones we see in South Africa and in the United States, with implications for interventions supporting health and livelihoods globally. /end 🧵
The Agincourt platform’s been running since the 1990s, with data on 20,000+ households. Researchers & community members note how frequent flooding and droughts are affecting households. A few months ago floods took out roads and affected the water supply. Disruptions are still affecting travel. 2/
More extreme weather events, increasing local wealth inequality, & increasing incidence of hypertension and diabetes. I just spent a week in rural South Africa with the teams at Wits Rural & the Agincourt Health & Socio-Demographic Surveillance System, both part of Uni of the Witwatersrand 🧵 1/
At long last, the director (@kris-smith.bsky.social) & co-directors of the Tanga Sociality & Fisheries Project in the same place at the same time ( #CESRabat) after writing multiple papers together! Some fruits of our labors are here: www.socialitylab.org/pubs/. Also btw our work was #NSFfunded 👌🏻
Congratulations to my MA student Courtney Elmore on her NSF GRFP!! A thread about Courtney's research, accomplishments, and where she's headed 🧵 #NSFfunded #veteransinSTEM #earlycareerresearcher #anthropology
A whole year - that's how long losing federal funding delayed a key scientific project of mine. Now I'm en route to Kenya, to finally make it happen ✈️. 1/5
Climate preparedness is on a lot of minds this year. Loved new pieces from @nytwirecutter.bsky.social on this & they have lots of recommendations, but it can be hard to decide where to start. Based on my past work, here are three smaller lifts from Wirecutter's list that can make a big difference:
US-based scientists are stubborn: we're stubbornly staying in community. We're still showing up. We're turning up in droves at college and institute and department holiday parties, society and org gatherings, and end-of-semester celebrations. 1/
We're located in State College, PA, a happy medium between city and country. You can live downtown and bike to restaurants and festivals, or live in the countryside with land and quiet -- and either way you're within 15 minutes of campus 💯
Penn State is serious about interdisciplinarity. It's baked into performance reviews, stimulated by seed grants, and central to our research institutes -- they're the extra glue that bring and hold us together 🤝
Penn State Anthropology is an integrative anthropology program, and we mean it. We do lots of team science with real-world applications -- in a fancy new building! -- and we like to get things done 🔥
📢 Come join us! Penn State Anthropology is hiring *two tenure-track assistant professors*, one in human reproductive ecology and one in archaeology. Here are just a few reasons why working at Penn State is awesome:
What if I told you that your friendships could help protect your local fisheries? In my op-ed in the Scranton Times-Tribune, I talk about how federal funding can support stewardship of US waterways - and how much taxpayers will lose from proposed cuts, including smart stewardship *and* $10bn a year.
🐄 People working with animals are most at risk of getting Rift, but you can get it from mosquitoes too 🦟 -- and for the 8-10% of people who get severe symptoms, some will lose their vision and others will die (2).
📢 On Friday, the NIH pulled funding for 10 centers monitoring infectious diseases around the globe -- diseases highly likely to cause the next pandemic (1). Let's look at just one of these diseases: Rift Valley Fever, monitored by my collaborators at WSU Global Health Kenya. 🧵
📢 Today I was supposed to be in DC, highlighting what the NSF Social, Behavioral, & Economic Sciences delivers to US taxpayers. NSF had one of the highest returns on investment (ROIs) of federal grantors 👏🏻 (1) and NSF SBE funded 63% of US social and psychological science research (2). 🧵
What happens when you get social scientists together from across disciplines to discuss morality and divisions? We'll have a lot to say! Tune in Fri April 25 -- registration and details below 👇🏻
...Institut Jean Nicod (especially Daniel Nettle) and @fondationfyssen.bsky.social (especially @mariesoressi.bsky.social and Vincent Niochet) for hosting me for the last week -- for comparing notes, throwing around ideas, and enjoying the spring weather with me 🌸
What starts and maintains cooperation: individual decision-making, dyadic interactions, institutions that come along with group membership, network dynamics...? Always more to discuss! Thanks Paris 🇫🇷. Thanks especially to...
Social networks look different in rainy season for Bangladeshi communities with different livelihoods says Ian Harryman: networks contract as risk goes up, but farming community manages risk with local ties while market-integrated community manages *correlated* risk with non-local ties. #AABA2025
Yes networks, including long-distance ties, can buffer collective risk (like environmental impacts) that strike whole communitie, says Joon Hwang, but inequality can undercut both network support generally as well as formation of long-distance ties - Joon speculates on why below. #AABA2025
Humans spend tons of energy on our bodies relative to other mammals & put on weight easily: very high resting energy expenditure, high & variable active energy expenditure (Dan Lieberman, Ian Wallace), & a tiny bit of positive energy balance means weight gain, across populations (Mary Joy) #AABA2025
It was hot both near the village and far away, and everyone experienced headaches and heightened stress -- but that 12 hours a day of heat exposure meant herders who moved with their animals experienced more heat-related illness, including dizziness and extreme sweating. ♨️