Teaching paleogenomics at the National School of Anthropology in Mexico City

In May 2019 my former PhD adviser Anne Stone and myself had an awesome experience teaching the invited course Paleogenomics and Anthropology at the National School of Anthropology (ENAH) in Mexico City. We were invited as part of the invited professors program sponsored by the undergraduate and postgraduate programs in Physical Anthropology at ENAH, as well as the Molecular Genetics laboratory. Our colleagues Maria Ávila-Arcos, Viridiana Villa, Miriam Bravo from LIIGH-UNAM, and Kelly Blevins from ASu also helped us teach this course.

The course was a week-long intensive featuring theory lectures, where we discussed basics of genomics, ancient DNA methods, and ethics among other topics. We also had laboratory and data analysis practical sessions. Tutorials and course materials for these practicals are freely available on my GitHub page here.

The INAH Boletín for May 2019 features some media coverage of these training efforts here, including interviews with our hosts faculty members Victor Acuña-Alonzo and Maria Eugenia Peña from ENAH.

As part of the events of our week in Mexico City we also gave two keynote speeches at the National Museum of Anthropology of Mexico (MNA) within a series called "El uso del ADN antiguo en el estudio de la historia humana" (The use of ancient DNA in the study of human history). The talks were recorded and live-streamed and you can watch them by clicking on the video to the right or visiting the INAH TV Youtube page here. The round table following our talks focuses on the ethics and practice of ancient DNA research, especially within the context of Mexico and Latin America, and features a rockstar panel completely formed of great women scientists all at different career levels.

The National Museum of Anthropology of Mexico (MNA) YouTube channel also ​interviewed us about our work last May and the video was released this month! Check it out here: La investigación antropológica en tiempos del ADN antiguo (En español) or on the News page on this website.

​This course was a fun and extremely rewarding experience. I learned as much from the students as they did from us. Really looking forward to the next adventure with our friends at ENAH!