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Allison Hopkins

Dr. Allison Hopkins
Director of Undergraduate Studies and Food, Nutrition, and Culture Bridging Theme Committee Chair
Associate Professor
Contact
  • (979) 862-9179
  • hopkins@tamu.edu
  • Anthropology 309H
Professional Links
Degree
PhD, University of Florida, 2009
Program
Cultural Anthropology
Pronouns
She/Her/Hers

Specialty:

Health and wellbeing, food security and sovereignty, global human rights, ethnobotany, globalization, social networks, knowledge transmission, mixed-methods, Latin America and Latinos in U.S.

Current Research Projects:

I’m a medical and ecological anthropologist specializing in interdisciplinary research on the connections between globalization and/or social relationships and human health. Specifically, I focus on understanding the knowledge people have about local resources, how that knowledge relates to their behavior, what factors are associated with variation in their knowledge and behavior, and ultimately how that relates to health. I have and continue to research these issues in varying contexts, with different populations, types of knowledge and factors at play. The theoretical and methodological approaches I use in my research are varied and depend on the research question and the strengths of the research team. Additionally, I make a concerted effort to apply my research to areas of global human rights and food and medical security and sovereignty.

My current research projects include a longitudinal study examining the change in herbal remedy knowledge over the last 15 years in a rural Yucatec Maya community and the cross-cultural study of locally-defined wellbeing and how that intersects with government-sponsored poverty alleviation programs. I’m also collaborating with colleagues on an NIH-funded study designed to capture the composition and changes in the social networks of recently quit smokers in the United States, how their networks relate to their ability to stay quit, and how information on smoking cessation spreads through their networks.

I welcome inquiry from potential graduate students interested in research topics that relates closely to my own. I also have opportunities for undergraduate students to carry out research with me. The students gain hands on experience with various aspects of the research process, including grant and manuscript writing, data collection instrument development, and data collection and analysis. In the Spring of 2019, I established the Planetary Health Laboratory, a space where my research team carries out research that recognizes the interconnections between the health of people and their environment at all scales, and its relationship to global human rights.

Courses Taught:

ANTH 205 – Peoples and Cultures of the World
ANTH 210 – Social and Cultural Anthropology
ANTH 426 – Anthropology of Food and Nutrition
ANTH 430 – Applied Anthropology
ANTH 435 – Medical Anthropology
ANTH 437 – Ethnobotany

Current Graduate Students:

Arik Bord
Viviane Clement
Hyein Kim
Casandra Owen
Michelle Yeoman

Selected and Recent Publications:

Athreya, S. and A.L. Hopkins. (2021) Conceptual issues in hominin taxonomy: Homo heidelbergensis and an ethnobiological reframing of species. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 175(Suppl. 72): 4-26.

Muramoto, M., Hopkins, A.L., Bell, M., Allen, A., Nair, and T. Connolly. (2021) Results of a feasibility study of Helpers Stay Quit Training for smoking relapse prevention. Nicotine & Tobacco Research 23(4): 711-715.

Gibbes, C., Hopkins, A., Inurreta, A. and J. Jimenez Osornio. (2020) Defining and measuring sustainability: A systematic review of studies in rural Latin America and the Caribbean. Environment, Development and Sustainability 22:447-468.

Hopkins, A.L., Yeoman, M. and C. Ritenbaugh. (2018) Healthy foods prepared at home: Diet and support as protective strategies during pregnancy for Hispanic women. Ecology of Food and Nutrition 57(2):140-161.

Hopkins, A.L., Stepp, J.R. McCarty, C. and J.S. Gordon. (2015) Herbal remedy knowledge acquisition and dissemination among the Yucatec Maya in Tabi, Mexico: A cross-sectional study. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 11:33.

Hopkins, A. and J.R. Stepp. (2012) Distribution of herbal remedy knowledge in Tabi, Yucatan, Mexico. Economic Botany 66(3):249-254.

Hopkins, A., Gibbes, C., Inurreta Diaz, A. and R. Rojas. (2012) Linking remote sensing, census, and interview data to understand forest transitions in the southern cone of the state of Yucatan, Mexico. Ethnobotany Research & Applications 10:1-13.

Hopkins, A. (2011) Use of network centrality measures to explain individual levels of herbal remedy cultural competence among the Yucatec Maya in Tabi, Mexico. Field Methods 23(3):307-328.