Keri Burge
she/her/hers
Graduate Student in the Department of Anthropology (Archaeology Program), Harvard University
Affiliations
Contact
Peabody Museum 571, 11 Divinity Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
Email: kburge@g.harvard.edu
– Research Interests –
Biomolecular archaeology, human oral microbiome, dental calculus, prehistoric health, human-environment interactions, diet, stable isotope analysis
– Bio –
Keri Burge is a third-year graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University. She received a B.A. in Anthropology with a minor in Biological Sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) in May of 2022 and subsequently received a M.A. in Anthropology from Harvard in 2024.
At UTK, her undergraduate senior thesis focused on using carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen stable isotope analysis as well as Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) to analyze archaeofaunal materials from the 17th – 18th century site of Coan Hall (44NB11) in Heathsville, Virginia with the goal of better understanding early colonial animal management practices. She was awarded the Goldwater Scholarship in March of 2021 and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in April of 2022 for her research experience.
Now at Harvard, Keri is further expanding her interests to include metagenomics, specifically focusing on the oral microbiome and its evolution. She has begun project collaborations with researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany with the goal of pursuing archaeological research that incorporates biomolecular methods to better understand prehistoric health and lifestyles. She is currently involved in two research projects: one is exploring the efficiency of different library protocols on ancient microbial DNA, and the other is focused on better understanding the diversity of archaea in both modern and ancient calculus samples. For her dissertation, she plans to study amylase binding proteins in oral microbes to better understand early adaptations to changing diets as well as the diversity of amylase binding proteins in both modern populations and ancient samples.
Keri is also a strong supporter of both STEM- and cultural-based outreach and education. While at UTK, she co-organized a weekly science club at Pond Gap Elementary, a Title I elementary school in Knoxville, and served as the Vice President for the Student Advisory Board at UTK’s McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture. In Cambridge, she is now involved with the organization Science Club for Girls where she weekly mentors third through fifth grade girls who are interested in STEM at Amigos Elementary School.
