BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Connor is a PhD candidate studying morphological variation in the skull of hominins, humans, and extant primates. Specifically, how cranial shape and size vary between sexes and during ontogenetic development in response to environmental stressors, social structure, and dietary preferences. Connor received his bachelor’s in Anthropology and Geology at Central Michigan University prior to pursuing his PhD in Biological Anthropology at UW-Madison.
Connor has participated in cultural resource management in Michigan alongside the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, as well as paleoanthropological excavations in Malawi, South Africa, and Zambia. His archaeological fieldwork in Malawi and Zambia focused on subsistence strategies of Middle and Later Stone Age hunter-gatherers and bioarcheological excavation and assessment of human burials. In South Africa, he has worked with the National Geographic Society Rising Star Project in subterranean survey of the Rising Star Cave System. Connor plans to pursue a career of teaching and leading a field site in sub-Saharan Africa to investigate hominin origins and subsistence.